May 2011 Conference

Dr. David E. Altig is senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In addition to advising the Bank president on monetary policy and related matters, Dr. Altig oversees the Bank's regional executives, the Bank's research department, and the district's Community and Economic Development function. He also serves as a member of the Bank's management and discount committees.

Dr. Altig also serves as an adjunct professor of economics in the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, where he was the recipient of the 2010 Einhorn award for excellence in executive MBA teaching.

Dr. Altig was an employee of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland prior to joining the Atlanta Fed in 2007.  He joined the Cleveland Fed in 1991 as an economist and was to promoted associate director of research in 1997. Before moving to Cleveland Dr. Altig was a faculty member in the department of business economics and public policy at Indiana University. He also has lectured at Ohio State University, Brown University, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, Duke University, John Carroll University, Kent State University, the University of Iowa, and the Chinese Executive MBA program sponsored by the University of Minnesota and Lingnan College of Sun Yat-Sen University.

Dr. Altig's research is primarily focused on monetary and fiscal policy issues. His articles have appeared in a variety of journals and he has served as editor for several conference volumes on a wide range of macroeconomic and monetary-economic topics.

Dr. Altig was born in Springfield, Ill., Aug. 10, 1956. He graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor's degree in business administration. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees in economics from Brown University.

He and his wife Pam have four children and four grandchildren.

Michael Drury is the Chief Economist for McVean Trading & Investments, LLC.  He joined the firm in 1992, after serving for five years as Vice President and Senior Economist with Allen Sinai at Shearson Lehman Brothers and his successor firm, The Boston Company Economic Advisors (both subsidies of American Express).  Michael began his career in New York in 1982 as Senior Economist at A. Gary Shilling and Company.  He completed his undergraduate education at the Georgia Institute of Technology and did his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Michael's primary responsibility is to develop investment strategies for futures market trading in eurodollars, currencies and industrial materials.  He is the author of McVean Trading's "Weekly Economic Update" which provides analysis of developing economic and financial trends around the world.  Michael travels extensively within the United States and to China, Europe and Latin America.  He has written extensively on housing and real estate, consumer spending, capital spending, fiscal policy and federal budget issues, regional economic developments, demographics, agriculture and energy.  Michael has directed projects on agriculture, retailing, the auto industry, electric power, real estate and financial services.  He is a board member of the Memphis Economic Club, founder and past president of the MidSouth Association for Business Economics (a chapter of NABE), a non-resident member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, and a member of the Global Interdependence Center.  Michael lives in Germantown, TN with his wife, Mahrou, and has three children.

Mr. Woodworth is President of PKF Hospitality Research (PKF-HR), an affiliate of PKF Consulting USA (PKF/C). Mr. Woodworth has over 30 years of hospitality industry experience, is based in Atlanta and is responsible for PKF-HR's national practice.  He is also a member of the executive committee of PKF/C.

Before forming PKF-HR in 1999, Mr. Woodworth was a Partner and Industry Chairman of the Hospitality Industry Consulting practice for Coopers & Lybrand L.L.P., and specialized in the lodging industry. Prior to that, he was a Senior Principal with Laventhol & Horwath where he focused on the hospitality industry and was responsible for all lodging and real estate consulting services in the southeastern United States.

Mr. Woodworth has managed and conducted consulting assignments, involving both the public and private sectors, throughout the U.S. He has worked for the industry's leading lenders, developers, chains and management companies and has dealt with all aspects of operations, development and financing.  Mr. Woodworth has been qualified as an expert and has testified in litigation and/or bankruptcy matters in New York, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky and Texas regarding hospitality properties.

Mr. Woodworth has been quoted on hospitality issues in such noted publications as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Barron's, USA Today, The Financial Times and numerous industry publications. Furthermore, Mr. Woodworth is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and is a Dean's Distinguished Lecturer at Cornell University.  He serves on the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Finance Committee of the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta.  He is a member of the Conference of Business Economists and also completed a three-year term on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University.

Mr. Woodworth holds both a B.S. and Master's Degree from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration.  He also served on the faculty of the Center for Professional Development at Cornell for 12 years.  He and his wife Mary Kay, along with their children Harry, Will, Sam and Savannah, reside in Atlanta.