Event Details

Renu Khator, Ph.D.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

CHANCELLOR AND PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON, AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEMBER AT PNC BANK

Renu Khator has been serving as chancellor of the University of Houston System and president of its flagship University of Houston campus, since January of 2008. She broke boundaries and glass ceilings with these appointments, as she became the first female chancellor in the state of Texas and the first Indian immigrant to lead a comprehensive research university in the U.S.

She has been named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served on numerous boards, including Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, TIAA-CREF, NCAA, American Council on Education, Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the Greater Houston Partnership. She has been named a Global Education and Institutional Leadership Honoree by the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston, a Houston Business Journal Women Who Mean Business Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Houstonian of the year and inducted into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame. In 2014, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee presented her with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award, the highest distinction bestowed upon a non-resident Indian.

Kenneth Kim

GUEST PANELIST

SENIOR ECONOMIST AT KPMG US

Kenneth Kim is a Senior Economist at KPMG LLP where he brings his insight and knowledge to help clients and KPMG leadership assess the constantly evolving economic environment. Ken has more than 20 years of experience conducting macroeconomic research and communicating his findings. Prior to joining KPMG, Ken was an economist with Merrill Lynch and later became a founding member of Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, the first independent economic research service on the Bloomberg terminal. Ken also worked as a U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets and senior economist at Huawei Technologies USA, where he focused on global growth, interest rates, foreign exchange and formulating risk scenarios.

Ken is known for his rigorous and careful economic and data analysis. In June 2014, Ken discovered a market-roiling error in the widely followed ISM manufacturing survey. As a result, Ken was featured in Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications, as this was the first such error found in the 80-year history of the survey. Ken also foresaw the approaching housing crisis in 2007 and has been instrumental to KPMG’s correct analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and key industries.

Andrew Woods

DIRECTOR, UNLV CENTER FOR BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Prior to joining UNLV’s CBER, Andrew started and ran a successful economic analysis, financial management, and public affairs consulting firm, as CEO of Woods Strategies, in Las Vegas, Nevada. His expertise in applying data and research to strengthen organizations and communities has led him to hold many leadership positions both in the public and private sectors. He is known for his financial acumen, vision, reliability, and integrity.

Andrew has been involved in the public policy process on behalf of his clients and has a passion for data-driven solutions to complex problems. Andrew’s knowledge of and interest in a variety of diverse policy issues is why he is a regular contributor to journalism outlets such as Nevada Public Radio and the Las Vegas Sun.

Stephen M. Miller

PROFESSOR, UNLV CENTER FOR BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Stephen M. Miller served as director of the Center for Business and Economic Research for the last six years. He is the former chair of the Board of Directors of The Economic Club of Las Vegas, a professor of economics, and former department chair in the Lee Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Prior to that, he was professor of economics and department head at the University of Connecticut. He also held visiting positions with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and with the Congressional Budget Office. He received higher education training at Purdue University, receiving his bachelor’s degree with distinction in Engineering Sciences Engineering (a part of the Aeronautical Engineering School), and at the State University of New York at Buffalo, receiving his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics.

At UNLV, he developed with one of his M.A. students, Mustafa Gunaydin, the CBER-DETR Nevada Coincident and Leading Employment Indexes. These indexes track the contemporaneous and future movements in the Nevada employment markets. After becoming Director of CBER, he developed general coincident and leading indexes for the Nevada and Southern Nevada. These indexes track the contemporaneous and future movements in the overall Nevada and Southern Nevada economies.

Amber Renee Dixon

PANEL MODERATOR

HOST, EMMY & EDWARD R. MURROW AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST

Amber Renee Dixon, a regional Edward R. Murrow and Emmy Award winner, is a veteran journalist who’s worked in Las Vegas for more than a decade. Amber became the host of the weekly public affairs show Nevada Week on Vegas PBS in February 2022, and in September 2022, she and the Nevada Week team won the Division 1 Public Media Award in Content: News and Public Affairs. An Arizona native, Amber is bilingual in Spanish and a proud graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She began her career reporting on border issues in South Africa, then continued on her journalistic path in Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. In 2012, she moved to Las Vegas to begin working at KSNV, the NBC affiliate. At KSNV, she worked for two years in News as a general assignment reporter, then transitioned into the role of sports reporter and weekend sports anchor.

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