PFI Talks

Mr. Joseph Wassel is the Executive Director (CEO) of the First Responder Network Authority. He is responsible for overall management of all FirstNet Authority operations and the organization’s strategic direction, to include its unique public-private arrangement to deploy and enhance the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network.

Prior to joining the FirstNet Authority, Mr. Wassel served as the Executive for the Cyberspace Operations Directorate within the Defense Information Systems Agency. He is also the former Director of C4 Resilience & Mission Assurance in the Department of Defense (DoD) Chief Information Officer’s office. He was also the founder and chair of DoD’s Public Safety Communications Working Group, where he led the Services, Joint Staff, National Guard, NORTHCOM, and other DoD partner activities for the Department’s public safety communications efforts, including Next-Generation Public Safety Wireless capabilities, Next-Generation 9-1-1 implementation, and Enterprise Mass Warning and Notification capabilities for DoD. Prior to assuming his former positions, Mr. Wassel served as the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Communications and Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

A retired Air Force Officer, he has commanded troops during several tours in the United States and overseas and deployed as a reservist in support of Operation Enduring Freedom as the Chief of Command and Control Operations for the International Security Assistance Force at the Combined Joint Operations Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mr. Wassel Joined the Senior Executive Service (SES) Corps in 2019. His military and civilian decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and the Secretary of Defense Meritorious and Exceptional Civilian Service Medals. He was decorated for his actions during the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Krisztián Orbán holds master's degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is a former McKinsey consultant, a former corporate executive, and the founder of Oriens, a top performing European PE fund which owns companies in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Hungary. Since 2010, Oriens has been acquiring medium-sized companies to turn them into successful large ones.

Dan McCrum is a multi-award winning journalist and author. He is a member of the Financial Times investigations team, and has spent 15 years writing about business from New York and London. His reporting has been recognised with more than a dozen prizes, including journalist of the year at the 2020 British Press Awards. His first book is ‘Money Men: a hot start up, a billion dollar fraud, a fight for the truth. It tells the thrilling inside story of the astonishing rise and crashing fall of the $30bn German fintech Wirecard, and has been made into the Netflix feature documentary Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard.

Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London, England). In 1997-98 he was Senior Policy Advisor at the International Monetary Fund. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (class of 1997).

Professor Eichengreen is the convener of the Bellagio Group of academics and economic officials and chair of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. He has held Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships and has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Palo Alto) and the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin). He is a regular monthly columnist for Project Syndicate.

Marc Faber, who studied at the University of Zurich and earned his PhD in Economics at the age of 24, is considered one of the world's premier economists and stock market investors. Known for his "contrarian" investment approach, Dr. Faber is renowned for his timely market predictions. He is also the author of an Amazon best seller, Tomorrow's Gold- Asia's Age of Discovery, has been a regular contributor to several of the world's leading financial publications, and is publisher of the widely read Gloom Boom & Doom Report.

Sumit Agarwal is Low Tuck Kwong Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Business School and a Professor of Economics and Real Estate at the National University of Singapore. He is also the Managing Director of Sustainable and Green Finance Institute at NUS. In the past, he has held positions as a Professor of Finance at the Business School, Georgetown University. Before that he was a senior financial economist in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and prior to joining the Chicago Fed, he was a senior vice president and credit risk management executive in the Small Business Risk Solutions Group of Bank of America.

Sumit’s research is widely cited in leading newspapers and magazines like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and the U.S Presidents Report to Congress. He also runs a blog on household financial decision making called Smart Finance.

Aswath Damodaran is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he teaches corporate finance and equity valuation. He is best known as author of several widely used academic and practitioner texts on Valuation, Corporate Finance, and Investment Management. Damodaran is widely quoted on the subject of valuation, with "a great reputation as a teacher and authority". He has written several books on equity valuation, as well on corporate finance, and investments. He is also widely published in leading journals of finance, including The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies.

Prior to joining NYU, he served as visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley from 1984 to 1986. He was profiled in Business Week as one of the top 12 U.S. business school professors; he has also received awards for excellence in teaching from both universities.

Je absolventem oboru finance, účetnictví a korporátní strategie na Institutu politických studiích v Paříži. V minulosti působil například jako M&A analytik ve skupině Société Générale nebo jako investiční bankéř Goldman Sachs v Londýně. Od roku 2010 se profesně zabývá především transakcemi a správou aktiv na trhu nájemního bydlení. Na vysokých manažerských pozicích působil ve společnostech BXR Partners v Praze, Olo Asunnot ve Finsku či Round Hill Capital v Londýně. Byl také finančním a následně investičním ředitelem společnosti Residomo, jež v Moravskoslezském kraji vlastnila 43 tisíc bytů převážně po OKD. Poté, co Residomo převzala švédská společnost Heimstaden, stal se v říjnu 2020 ředitelem jejího akvizičního týmu pro střední a východní Evropu, Německo a Finsko.