Faculty & Panelist Bios

David J. Berger, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

David Berger is a Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he specializes in the areas of corporate governance, fiduciary duties of directors and merger and acquisition and securities litigation. He also chairs the firm’s M&A Litigation Department. Mr. Berger has represented a number of institutional and other investors in proxy contests and other challenges arising out of control issues. He is a frequent author and lecturer on corporate governance and control issues, and has been a faculty member of numerous directors’ institutes and professional programs. Mr. Berger is a Member of the Duke Global Capital Markets Center Advisory Board.

Daniel R. Carmichael, Platinum Underwriters Holdings, Ltd.

Dan Carmichael has been a director since 2002 and Non-Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors since 2008. Mr. Carmichael has been an executive consultant to Liberty Mutual Agency Markets, a business unit of Liberty Mutual Group, since August 2007. Prior thereto, he was President, Chief Executive Officer and a Director of Ohio Casualty Corporation, an insurance holding company. His insurance career has included positions as Chairman, President and CEO of IVANS, Inc. and Anthem Casualty Group, as well as Executive Vice President, Field Operations at Crum & Forster. Mr. Carmichael is a Director of Alleghany Corporation.

David Chun, Equilar, Inc.

As Chief Executive Officer and Founder, David Chun has led Equilar from a pure start-up since its inception in 2000 to one of the most respected and trusted names in the executive compensation industry. He often speaks publicly on issues facing the executive compensation industry, including events hosted by The Conference Board, Cooley Godward Kronish, Directorship, Foley & Lardner's National Directors Institute, The HR Policy Association, National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), NASDAQ, National Association of Stock Planning Professionals (NASPP), NYSE Euronext, RiskMetrics and the University of Wisconsin Directors' Summit. Prior to founding Equilar, Mr. Chun was a Vice President in the Investment Banking Division of Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. Prior to DLJ, he was a management consultant with Bain & Company and Kenan Systems. He is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO), a Charter Member of the Asian-American Multi-Technology Association (AAMA), a co-founder of the Korean American Society of Entrepreneurs (KASE), and an advisory board member of The Jackson Hole Group. He earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Science with Honors in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia. 

Hugh Courtney, University of Maryland

Hugh Courtney is Associate Dean of Executive Programs and Professor of the Practice of Strategy at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. In addition, he is Chairman of the Board of Directors of D&E Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: DECC), a provider of voice, data and video services in central and eastern Pennsylvania. Dr. Courtney also maintains an active consulting practice focused on business strategy formulation in highly uncertain and/or oligopoly markets. He serves clients on his own and through affiliations with McKinsey & Company, Katzenbach Partners LLC, Decision Strategies International, and the Analysis Group. Before returning to academia in 2002, Dr. Courtney was an Associate Principal with McKinsey & Company in Washington, DC. While at McKinsey, he was a leader of its Global Strategy Practice and served clients on six continents across most industry sectors. Dr. Courtney earned his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.A. in economics from Northwestern University.

Jeffrey C. Coyne, Duke University

Jeffrey Coyne is currently Chairman and CEO of Provect Technologies, a privately held software and service company based in Chicago. He has served as a senior lecturing fellow at Duke University School of Law for thirteen years, teaching courses on corporate reorganization and fraud investigation. Mr. Coyne previously has served as a panelist at the Duke Directors Education Institute, a director of several publicly traded companies including two Toronto based software and service companies. He previously has served on audit, corporate governance and compensation committees. Mr. Coyne has worked extensively in reorganizing troubled companies and assets through Rebel Asset Management, Ltd. This work has included operation of companies as owner, restructuring officer, trustee, or receiver in multiple countries and industries. Some of these projects have been in the hospitality industry, software, manufacturing, real estate development and retail operations. Mr. Coyne is the former Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Divi Hotels, Inc. He has served as a partner and head of the creditor’s rights departments with the international law firms Coudert Brothers and Graham and James. Mr. Coyne received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and his J.D. from Duke University School of Law.

Raymond Groth, Duke University

Ray Groth is currently a Visiting Professor of Business Administration at The Fuqua School of Business and a Visiting Scholar at the Global Capital Markets Center, Duke University. He currently serves on the boards of directors of CT Communications, Inc. (and is a member of its audit and corporate governance/nominating committees) and of Specialty Underwriters' Alliance, Inc. (and is a member of its audit and compensation committees). Previously he has served as head of the Merger and Acquisition Group of First Union Securities, Inc. and prior to that position, was a managing director in the Merger and Acquisition Group of The First Boston Corporation in New York. Mr. Groth joined First Boston after practicing law with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. Mr. Groth is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1969, in accounting) and of the Law School, Yale University (1972).

Robert M. Hart, Alleghany Corporation

Bob Hart is Senior Vice President-Law and Secretary of Alleghany Corporation. Prior to joining Alleghany in 1994, Hart was Co-chairman of the Corporate Department of Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine. His practice has involved representation of public companies and financial institutions in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, public offerings, private financings, development of new financial products and advising on corporate governance matters. Hart also participated as a panelist at the Duke Directors’ Education Institute and taught for several years as a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke University School of Law. He is a member of the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute.

Janet Hill, Alexander & Associates

Janet Hill is the Vice President of Alexander & Associates, Inc., a corporate consulting firm in Washington, D.C. She provides corporate planning, advice and analyses to directors, executives and managers in the areas of human resource planning, corporate responsibility, corporate communications and government consultation. Mrs. Hill is a member of the Boards of Directors of Sprint Nextel, Inc.; Wendy’s International, Inc.; and Dean Foods, Inc., as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of Duke University, the Board of Visitors of The Fuqua School of Business at Duke, and the Board of Advisors of the Hart Leadership Program at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke.

Albert “Pete” Kyle, University of Maryland

Professor Kyle's research focuses on theoretical market microstructure. His research involves mathematical modeling of informed trading in speculative markets, including topics such as insider trader, market manipulation, price volatility, the information content of market prices, and market liquidity. His current research also deals with concepts from industrial organization to model the valuation dynamics of growth stocks and value stocks by applying techniques used to value real options. His teaching interests include venture capital and private equity, corporate finance, option pricing, market microstructure, and asset pricing. After obtaining an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Davidson College and studying economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, Prof. Kyle received his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. Before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland, he was a professor at Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Duke University. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a board member of the American Finance Association. He served as a staff member of the Presidential Task Force on Market Mechanisms (Brady Commission) after the stock market crash of 1987 and is a current a member of NASDAQ's economic advisory board.

Patrick S. McGurn, RiskMetrics Group

Patrick McGurn is Special Counsel at RiskMetrics Group’s ISS Governance Services unit. ISS is the world’s leading provider of proxy voting services and corporate governance research. ISS serves more than 1,700 institutional investor clients. ISS recommends votes on ballot issues for more than 37,000 shareholder meetings across 115 markets around the globe. Prior to joining ISS in April 1996, Pat was director of the Corporate Governance Service at the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), a not-for-profit firm that provided governance research to investors.

Clifford Rossi, University of Maryland

As managing director of the Center for Financial Policy, Rossi oversees operations and outreach. He will also teach in Smith’s MBA program. Rossi has nearly 25 years experience in banking and government, having held senior executive roles in risk management at several of the largest financial services companies. His most recent position was Chief Risk Officer for Consumer Lending at Citigroup where he was intimately involved in TARP funding and stress tests performed on Citi. He also helped start a statistical arbitrage unit at Citi and helped integrate market and credit risk analytics across Citi’s mortgage portfolios. While at Citi, he was responsible for overseeing a $200 billion global mortgage portfolio with 700 employees under his direction. Previous to Citi, Rossi held senior positions at other major financial institutions and worked for a number of years at the Treasury Department and Office of Thrift Supervision working on key policy issues affecting depositories. Before permanently joining the Smith School, Rossi served as an adjunct professor for eight years and has a number of publications on banking industry topics. He earned his PhD at Cornell University.

David A. Schwarz, Irell & Manella LLP

David Schwarz is a Partner with Irell & Manella’s litigation practice group. His practice focuses on the defense of class actions, with emphasis on securities and shareholder claims against public corporations, and consumer class actions. Mr. Schwarz’s securities litigation practice has focused on parallel proceedings involving SEC enforcement actions and shareholder class actions and derivative claims. He has written on topics relating to securities litigation, securities reform legislation, white-collar criminal defense, and the defense of professionals in securities class actions. He is a Member of the Duke Global Capital Markets Center Advisory Board.

David N. Swinford, Pearl Meyer & Partners

David Swinford, President and Chief Executive Officer, joined Pearl Meyer & Partners in 1998. Mr. Swinford works closely with compensation and governance committees as well as Boards on linking compensation with business strategy; contractual arrangements; and incentive plan design, including the development of meaningful performance standards. He provides a strong focus on compensation-related corporate governance, including issues related to Board independence and oversight, talent development and succession planning. Over the past 30 years, Mr. Swinford has worked in all major industries. Mr. Swinford serves on the faculty of the Corporate Directors Institute of the National Association of Corporate Directors. He writes and lectures regularly on issues related to executive compensation and Board governance, including presentations before many directors institutes and university-sponsored executive education programs, as well as The Conference Board and WorldatWork.

Stephen Wallenstein, University of Maryland

Director, Directors' Institute and Senior Fellow of Finance at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, the University of Maryland. Wallenstein is a recognized expert in corporate governance and best practices for publicly-traded companies in the U.S. and abroad. Wallenstein spent the past 11 years at Duke University as a faculty member of The Fuqua School of Business and Duke Law School. He founded the Duke Directors’ Education Institute (DEI) in 2002 and established the Duke Global Capital Markets Center (GCMC) in 1998, a collaborative effort between the Fuqua School and Duke Law. Wallenstein was a member of the Board of Directors of CVRD-Inco from 2006-2007, and an advisor to the Management Committee of Vale (Brazil) from 2007-2009. Previously Wallenstein spent 15 years as senior counsel and senior investment officer at the International Finance Corporation in Washington, D.C. becoming a recognized expert on emerging markets. He also taught at American University, University of Denver College of Law, and in Brazil at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro and Fundacao Getulio Vargas.