Jeffry R. Haber
Associate Professor, Iona College and Controller
The Commonwealth Fund

Currently Mr. Warner serves as the Director of Natural Resources Investing for the University Of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO), the manager of the $23 billion University of Texas and Texas A&M System Endowment, the largest public endowment in the country. In this role he is responsible for all private equity, hedge fund and public securities investments across a broad range of natural resources and infrastructure globally.

Mr. Warner has also held a variety of financial leadership positions at PointOne, Inc., Growth Capital Partners, L.P., Enron Corporation, Ecogas Corporation, Remington Oil Company (formerly Box Energy), and Marathon Oil Company.

Mr. Warner has previously served as a independent member of the board of directors of Hornbeck Offshore Services, Inc. (NYSE:HOS), an integrated marine transportation company in New Orleans, Louisiana and is currently a director of Quicksilver Resources, Inc (NYSE:KWK) a Fort Worth, Texas based natural gas exploration and production company where he serves on the compensation and audit committees and chairs the nominating committee. He has also served as a board member or observer for a variety of other companies.

John Anderson is the Head of Power and Project Finance for John Hancock, the US arm of Manulife Financial of Toronto, the second largest life insurer in North America. His team manages an $11 billion portfolio of public bonds, private placement debt, and private equity investments. In 2007, they invested $2 billion into the power industry and other infrastructure companies.

Mr. Anderson has worked in the financing of the power industry since 1992, as an investor, as an arranger of financing, and as a financial advisor to power, energy, and environmental companies in both developed and developing markets. Prior to joining John Hancock in 2001, Mr. Anderson worked in the New York and London offices of JP Morgan Chase, where he led teams that advised on or arranged more than US$8 billion in debt financing from the syndicated loan and bond markets.

Mr. Anderson holds an MBA from Georgetown University, and a BA in Economics from The University of Chicago. Mr. Anderson speaks French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian at an intermediate level, and would not be mistaken for a native speaker in any of these languages.

Francisco Blanch is Managing Director and Head of Global Commodity Research at Merrill Lynch. He is based in London and is the founding member of the group.

Dr. Blanch joined Merrill Lynch in April 2005 and his role focuses on the analysis of commodity prices and derivatives. He publishes the Commodity Strategist, the Energy Strategist, the Global Energy Weekly, and Commodity Derivatives Insights, a set of tactical publications widely followed by Merrill’s corporate and investor clients. In addition, he has developed the Merrill Lynch Commodity index eXtra (MLCX) and 300 related indices, and regularly contributes to the Inflation Strategist and the Global Economics reports. Since May 2006, Dr. Blanch sits on Merrill Lynch’s Research Investment Committee, a group that advises Merrill Lynch’s Global Private Client (GPC) arm, the world's premier provider of wealth management services with nearly $2 trillion in client assets.

Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Dr. Blanch was an energy economist focusing on global oil & gas in the Commodity Research group at Goldman Sachs & Co. and consulted for the European Commission and other public and private organisations.

John Dell’Erario established Silver Hill Capital, LLC in January, 2005. John has over 20 years experience in the investment business. He was a Vice President and Fixed Income Portfolio Manager for Baring Asset Management in Boston and London. Prior to Barings, John was the sole manager of a $15 billion interest rate cap portfolio for the Bank of Boston.

John earned a BA degree in economics in 1979 from Williams College. He has served the college as Class Secretary as well as President of the Boston Alumni Association. He earned an MM degree from the JL Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1985 with concentrations in economics, accounting and finance.

Paul D. Kaplan is vice president of quantitative research at Morningstar, Inc., responsible for the quantitative methodologies behind Morningstar’s fund analysis, indexes, advisor tools, and other services. He conducts research on style analysis, performance and risk measurement, asset allocation, retirement income planning, portfolio construction, index methodologies, and alternative investments. He led the development of quantitative methodologies behind the Morningstar RatingTM for funds, the Morningstar Style BoxTM, and the Morningstar family of indexes. He has served as chief investment officer of Morningstar Associates, LLC, a registered investment advisor and wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc., where he developed and managed the investment methodology for Morningstar’s retirement planning and advice services.
Many of Dr. Kaplan’s research papers have been published in professional books and publications such as the Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Journal of Wealth Management, the Journal of Investing, the Journal of Performance Measurement, the Journal of Indexes, the Handbook of Equity Style Management, and Intelligent Commodity Investing. He was a Graham and Dodd Award of Excellence winner in 2000.

Dr. Kaplan has made numerous presentations on fund analysis, asset allocation, portfolio management, equity indexes, and related topics at professional conferences, meetings of professional organizations, and professional education programs. He has been quoted in several major business publications.

Before joining Morningstar in 1999, he was a vice president of Ibbotson Associates and served as the firm’s chief economist and director of research. (Morningstar acquired Ibbotson in March 2006.) Prior to that, he served on the economics faculty of Northwestern University where he taught international finance and statistics.

Dr. Kaplan holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, economics, and computer science from New York University and a master’s degree and doctorate in economics from Northwestern University. He is a member of the Chicago Quantitative Alliance and is a member of the review board of the Research Foundation of the CFA Institute. Dr. Kaplan holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Daniel Raab is a Managing Director at AIG Financial Products Corp. and is the head of commodity indexing.

Mr. Raab played a key role in the creation of the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity IndexSM and has been involved in structuring commodity and financial derivative transactions for over 20 years.

Prior to joining AIG in 1992, Mr. Raab developed proprietary trading models for Citibank's investment banking division and traded foreign exchange at Mitsui Bank.

Mr. Raab received an MBA in finance and a BA from Columbia University.

Ehud I. Ronn is Professor of Finance at the University of Texas at Austin and Director of the Center for Energy Finance at the McCombs School of Business.

Dr. Ronn obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University and has published articles on investments and energy derivatives in both academic and practitioner literature.

Prior to joining the University of Texas in July 1988, Dr. Ronn was a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. While on a two-year 1991 - '93 leave of absence, Dr. Ronn served as Vice President, Trading Research Group at Merrill Lynch & Co.

Since 1993, he has served as consultant on interest rates and energy-commodities. In Nov. 2004, Dr. Ronn was selected by Energy Risk to the “Energy Risk Hall of Fame."

John Hill graduated from North Carolina State University in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. From 1982 to 1985, John worked for Commodity Research Institute where he developed testing platforms for researching price data. From 1985 to 1987, he studied Physics at North Carolina State University. He returned to work for Commodity Research Institute in 1987 where he developed and implemented computerized trading systems for exchange-traded derivatives.

From 1989 to 2002, John worked for Hill Financial Group where he developed and implemented a Multiple Strategy Program. He served as CEO of Hill Financial Group from 1994 to 2002. In March 2002, John became a partner of Crabel Capital Management. Currently, John is a portfolio manager for several products including the Hill Crabel Futures Program. He spends most of his time managing his portfolios and conducting research.

Kyle Dickard is responsible for America's Derivative Sales and Global Commodities Analysis. His Derivative Sales responsibilities include coverage of all hedge funds, producers, corporates, metals sales, and Global Private Client distribution. He is also responsible for managing the analytics functions for natural gas, power and crude & products for North America, Europe and Asia.

Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Kyle held various roles in commodity trading and analysis. He was the Vice President of Koch Hydrocarbon & Olefin Analysis and Vice President of Gas and Power Analysis for Entergy-Koch Trading. Kyle began his career in energy commodities in 1987, working for a major oil company and consulting firm before joining Koch Industries in 1994 and Entergy-Koch Trading in 2000. Kyle is active in Big Brothers Big Sisters and The Periwinkle Foundation.

Rick Gilmore is the President and Founder of GIC Group, an integrated agribusiness firm offering financial and investment services along with technical consulting to corporate and public institutional clients. Gilmore holds a PhD in trade economics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, where he was a Fulbright Fellow. Dr. Gilmore has published and spoken extensively on the grain trade and on agricultural biotechnology issues, biofuels policy, emerging market agribusiness, and private equity investment in agribusiness. He was formerly the Senior Economist on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Rockefeller Fellow. He currently serves as a trustee of Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, and Agrium companies. Gilmore was recently interviewed in the Today Show on food price inflation and will speak in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Boston in the coming month on commodity investing.

Jeff Blazek works as a Principal in the Strategic Research Group at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. He implements strategic and tactical asset allocation for the fund across its $100 billion of assets, and executes the fund’s commodity multi-billion dollar allocation. Previously at Texas Teachers, Jeff was a portfolio manager in the credit group, responsible for the automotive, telecom, media and technology sectors.

Jeff previously worked in New York, including positions as an equity research associate at Lehman Brothers, a Vice President at long/short hedge fund Derchin Management, and as an audit and M&A consultant at Ernst & Young. Jeff is a CFA and CPA, and holds bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Texas.

John Serrapere
Portfolio Strategist and Investment Analyst
Foster Holdings