JOHN E. SILVIA

John Silvia is managing director and the chief economist for Wells Fargo. Prior to his current position, John worked on Capitol Hill as senior economist for the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee and chief economist for the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Before that, he was chief economist of Kemper Funds and managing director of Scudder Kemper Investments, Inc. John was formerly president and a director of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) and was former president of the Charlotte Economics Club. He has also served on economic advisory committees for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the Public Securities Association.

John was awarded a NABE Fellow Certificate of Recognition in 2011 for outstanding contributions to the Business Economics Profession and Leadership among Business Economists to the Nation. For the second time in three years, he was awarded the best overall forecast by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, as well as the best unemployment rate forecast for 2011. John has been awarded the Adolph Abramson award for the best article in economics published in Business Economics for a given year. John holds BA and PhD degrees in economics from Northeastern University in Boston and has a master's degree in economics from Brown University. John's book Dynamic Economic Decision Making was published by Wiley in August 2011. John's co-authored book, Economic and Business Forecasting: Analyzing and Interpreting Econometric Results, was published by Wiley in March 2014.

AZHAR IQBAL

Azhar Iqbal is a director and econometrician at Wells Fargo, responsible for providing quantitative analysis to the Economics group and modeling and forecasting of macro and financial variables. He is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Before joining Wells Fargo in 2007, he was an economist and course instructor at the University of Karachi in Pakistan. He has also worked as an economist on funded projects at the United Nations.

Azhar has three master's degrees. He earned his master's degree in economic forecasting from the University at Albany, State University of New York. He also has master's degrees in applied economics from the University of Karachi, and in econometrics and mathematics from the University of the Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan.

Azhar won the 2012 and 2014 NABE Contributed Paper Award as well as the 2010 Edmund A. Mennis Contributed Paper Award for best papers from the National Association of Business Economics (NABE). A strong supporter of education, Azhar teaches a graduate course, Advanced Business and Economic Forecasting, at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Azhar's co-authored book, Economic and Business Forecasting: Analyzing and Interpreting Econometric Results, was published by Wiley in March 2014.

His interests focus on forecasting, time series, panel data, and macroeconomics. Azhar has presented research papers at the American Economic Association, Econometric Society meetings, the Panel Data Conference, and other international conferences. He has published over two dozen papers in the Canadian Journal of Economics, Global Economy Journal, Business Economics, Journal of Business Forecasting, and others refereed journals.

SARAH WATT HOUSE

Sarah House is an economist with Wells Fargo Securities. She received her BA in economics and political economy from Tulane University and her MSc from the London School of Economics. Sarah is a member of the National Association of Business Economics and Charlotte Economics Club.