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Our People
IFE Group is a team of widely known and highly skilled financial modelers and strategists with a wide range of diverse specialization and experience serving private and public financial institutions globally. Each of our senior leaders has over ten years professional experience serving leading financial institutions, with hands-on experience in implementing complex tasks and strategies, and recognition as a thought leader in their field. We have published over seventy articles in academic journals and professional magazines. We are unique in that we provide truly ˇ§integratedˇ¨ financial engineering solutions by bringing together in-depth understanding of the details of model development and implementation, cutting edge modeling skills and knowledge, and diversified expertise in multiple domains associated with financial institution operations.
Tyler T. Yang, Ph.D., President,
specializes in fixed-income and mortgage
derivative securities pricing, defining and measuring risk-based capital,
hedging transactions design and execution, automated portfolio risk management
reports, and policy impact analyses. Dr. Yang is active in several academic and
practical organizations, currently the Executive Director and an ex-President of
the Asian Real Estate Society. He also serves as a co-editor or an associate
editor for several leading finance and real estate journals. He was previously
with Freddie Mac, Price Waterhouse, Fannie Mae, and taught at
George Washington University and
California
State University at
Long Beach.
Dr. Yang received his Ph.D. in Finance and M.Arch. from the University of
Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
Henry J. Cassidy, Ph.D., Chief
Advisor-Consultant,
has over thirty years experience in leading and managing various business
functions for financial institution including trading and asset liability
management, financial and economics research and underwriting process and
scoring, asset securitization, and invented several financial products such as
GIANT. He was previously with Freddie Mac, Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and
Brookings Institute. Dr. Cassidy taught at Virginia Tech and George Mason
University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics at University of
Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
Maureen Bolton, J.D., Vice President of Product
and Market Development,
specializes
in designing and implementing
mortgage-backed securities programs internationally, including structuring,
marketing and monitoring innovative funding programs, and managing the
resolution and liquidation of non-performing loan portfolios.
Ms. Bolton also has extensive experience in creating
successful sales programs for non-performing loans and has worked with a variety
of clients in the
US,
Europe and
China to implement such programs.
She was previously with the World Bank Groupˇ¦s IFC,
National Australia Bank, KPMG Peat Marwick, Fannie Mae and Asst. the Resolution Trust Corporation. Ms. Bolton
received her J.D. from the
University of
Chicago.
Charles A. Calhoun, Ph.D., Vice President of
Economics and Statistics, specializes in mortgage default and prepayment modeling, house price index
estimation, risk-based capital policy analysis and modeling, and statistical and
demographic methods. Dr. Calhoun has served as a domestic and international
consultant and has testified as an expert witness in federal courts. Recent
consulting engagements include: Farmer Mac, The Urban Institute, The World Bank,
Countrywide Credit Industries, and the Government Housing Bank of
Thailand. He was previously with the Office of Federal Housing
Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the Urban Institute, Fannie Mae, the International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and taught at
Georgetown
University and
Florida
State
University. Dr. Calhoun received his Ph.D. in Economics and M.A.
in Statistics from the
University of
Michigan.
Ren-Raw Chen, Ph.D., Vice President of
Financial Modeling, specializes
in modeling term structure of interest rates
and credit risks, automating pricing models for trading desks and rating
agencies, deriving closed form solutions, implementing lattice and
Monte Carlo simulations,
and complex calibrations. He has published papers
across major finance as well as professional journals. He also has implemented
pricing models for financial companies, including credit derivatives pricing
models for Lehman Brothers, structural default models for Moodyˇ¦s KMV,
convertible bond and fixed income derivatives models for Grand Cathy Securities
Corporation, and a two-factor HJM model for Polypaths Software. Dr. Chen
received his Ph.D. in Finance from the
University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has taught at
Rutgers,
the State University of New Jersey, and worked at JP
Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Grand Cathy Securities Corporation, Moodyˇ¦s KMV, and
Black Rock.
Dunmu Ji, Ph.D., Director of Information
Technology,
specializes in financial quantitative
analysis and system development including security valuation, risk measurement,
financial risk management system design and implementation, data warehousing,
and financial reports automation. He was responsible for the product design,
database, network and communication for middle and back office systems. The
system he built was applied by many leading investment and commercial banks.
Dr. Ji was previously the President of Hedge System Inc., a Director of
Research of Gifford Fong Associates, and taught at
Beijing
University.
His previous clients include Fuji/Mizuho, Goldman Sachs, Origin County,
Dresdner, etc. Dr. Ji received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Brown
University.
Sandy S. Wang, MBA/CPA, Vice President of
Finance and Operation,
specializes in financial reporting
and analysis, taxation, accounting system and database management, treasury,
operational management and control, and regulatory compliance. She has a
diversified working experience in the health care, accounting, technology,
banking, and import/export industries both domestically and globally. She has
served as the fund manager for a private investment club for over fifteen
years. She was previously with Coventry HealthCare, Principal HealthCare,
Marriott International, and KPMG Peat Marwick, FHP Inc., and ISS. Ms. Wang
received her MBA degree from the
University of
Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
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Senior Consultants
David Andrukonis, is a widely respected senior mortgage executive with 25 years working experience at one of the world's largest financial enterprises. He expertise in firm's interest-rate, credit and operational risk management as well as capital deployment. He served as Senior Vice President of Capital Deployment, Chief Enterprise Risk Officer and Chief Credit Officer at Freddie Mac.
Joseph Blalock, has over seventeen years experience as a financial analyst, risk manager, and management consultant to companies primarily engaged in mortgage lending and securitization. Mr. Blalock's experience includes the portfolio side of the business as well as mortgage banking. He is highly knowledgeable of fixed-income financial instruments (MBS, ABS, other bonds), derivatives, capitalized fee income (MSRs, etc), and financial models used in pricing, asset/liability management, interest rate risk management, and portfolio and corporate management (VaR/RAROC). His experience includes working with non-US banks, international assignments, and review of international lending and FOREX derivatives.
Phelim Boyle, Ph.D., has been a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries for over 30 year. His current interest include actuarial science, the risk management of insurance products, executive stock options, mortgage default insurance, Monte Carlo methods, portfolio optimization and hedge funds. His work on the application of Monte Carlo methods to finance problems was the starting point for many of the current applications of this technology by leading financial institutions. Dr. Boyle had been the J. Page R. Wadsworth Chair of Finance at the University of Waterloo and was honored as the 2005 Financial Engineer of the Year by the IAFE.
Richard J. Buttimer, Jr., Ph.D., specializes in pricing mortgage-backed securities, mortgage insurance contracts, mortgage servicing rights, managing interest rate and credit risks, and analyzing derivative securities. Dr. Buttimer is active in many academic finance and real estate societies, and regularly presents research at both domestic and international conferences. Dr. Buttimer was previously with First Imperial Investors and PricewaterhouseCoopers and has taught at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the University of Texas at Arlington. He received his Ph.D. in Real Estate from the University of Georgia.
William C. Handorf, Ph. D., has been a professor of finance and real estate with The George Washington University for over thirty years and serves as a director and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (Baltimore Branch). He has written over 400 articles, papers monograph and books related to finance, economics, real estate, and general business. Dr. Handorf has worked as a commercial banker, as a bank regulator, been an Army officer and a consultant to accounting firms and central banks of many countries. In addition, he was a director with the Federal Home Loan Bank System, and often serves as an expert witness in legal cases related to finance, real estate, and banking.
James J. Johnson, has over 30 years hands-on experience in the US real estate mortgage industry with emphasis on mortgage production and risk management, especially mortgage credit policy and underwriting, property appraisal, loan document management, quality control, operational risk management, counterparty risk management, and fraud investigation and recovery.
Cary C. Lin, Ph.D., specializes in pricing mortgage-backed securities, mortgage servicing contracts, and analyzing credit-card and cash-card receivables. Dr. Lin received his both Master in Real Estate and Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Texas at Arlington. He has taught at National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan).
Hongyu Liu, is one of the most reputable experts of real estate and construction in China market. His expertises are real estate economics, real estate development, real estate finance and investment, and construction project management. Mr. Liu is a Professor and Director of the Institute of Real Estate Studies at Tsinghua University. He also serves as the Honorary Professor of The Hong Kong University, Vice President of China Institute of Real Estate Appraisers, and the former President of Asian Real Estate Society
Chiuling Lu, Ph.D., expertise in the areas of market efficiency, asset securitization, and real estate finance and investment, with particular emphasis in real estate investment trusts. She has published numerous articles in professional journals and has been a winner of the Taiwan National Science Council Research Award every year since 1997. Dr Lu teaches at the Yuan Ze University, is a frequent participant at international academic meetings, and has presented many papers at past AsRES conferences. She received her Ph.D. degree in Finance from the University of Connecticut and M.S. Finance from Louisiana State University.