Keynote Speakers

Anna R. Cablik
President
ANATEK, INC.

Anna R. Cablik was born and raised in the Republic of Panama, where she obtained a degree in Medical Technology from the Canal Zone College. After finishing her studies, she got married to Jerry C. Cablik and together they came to Atlanta in 1974. She started out working at Piedmont Hospital, after two years, she had an opportunity to change jobs and in 1976 she started working with a construction materials company. She stayed there for seven years, progressing from clerk to Vice President of the Company. In 1982 she left her position to start her first company: ANATEK, INC., a contracting company that specializes in highway bridges.

After leading ANATEK, INC. to become one of the largest Hispanic owned firms in Georgia, Ms. Cablik started ANASTEEL & Supply Company, LLC in 1994. ANASTEEL is the only Hispanic/female owned reinforcing steel fabricator in the Southeast, and possibly the United States.

In 2001, Ms. Cablik joined forces with Mark Massmann and started a third company: MassAna Construction LLC. MassAna is a general contractor specializing in heavy construction. In 2006 she sold her ownership interest in MassAna Construction.

Ms. Cablik is also a partner of PanAmerican Logistics, LLC, a logistics company that operates the Perishables Center at the Atlanta Airport, and PanAmerican International, LLC, an importer of ethnic foods form Latin America.

She is on the Board of Directors of Georgia Power Company and a member of the Corporate Board of Branch Banking and Trust. She is a member of the fundraising committee of the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and a member of the Board of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. She also serves on the Board of the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta. She has served on the Boards of the Latin American Association, Saint Joseph’s Mercy Care, The Fulton Atlanta Community Action Authority, The Advisory Board of “211”, Woman Looking Ahead, the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the Board of Counselors for the Carter Center and The Greater Atlanta Economic Alliance.

Ms. Cablik has received numerous awards and recognitions. Most recently she received the FBE Phoenix Tral Blazer Award by the City of Atlanta in March 2004, the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce 20th Anniversary Special Award in June 2004 and the 25 Power Women Award by Atlanta Woman Magazine in January 2007.

Chris Clark
Executive Director
Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority (GEFA)

Chris Clark is the executive director of the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority (GEFA). GEFA provides financing for water and sewer infrastructure projects, reservoirs, weatherization, state fuel tanks, recycling and solid waste projects. GEFA is home to Conserve Georgia, the Governor’s Energy Challenge 2020, the Georgia Land Conservation Program, the State Energy Office and Georgia’s Energy Innovation Center

Clark is a member of Georgia Water Council and the Georgia Drought Command. Additionally, he is Governor Sonny Perdue’s proxy on the Southern Growth Policy Board. Clark is an advisory board member for the University of Georgia’s College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, a graduate of Georgia’s first executive leadership program and serves as president of the Georgia Economic Developers Association (GEDA).

Clark was previously the deputy commissioner for global commerce at the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD), the marketing arm of the state of Georgia.

A native of Fitzgerald, Ga., Clark earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgia Southern University and received a master’s degree in public administration from Georgia College and State University. Clark, his wife Tiffany and son Christian reside near Peachtree City in Fayette County, Georgia.

Benjamin R. DeCosta
Aviation General Manager
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport

Benjamin R. DeCosta assumed the leadership of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, as aviation general manager for the City of Atlanta - Department of Aviation in June of 1998. He has placed Airport customer service and security at the top of his list of priorities. Mr. DeCosta and his staff are committed to ensuring that passengers enjoy visiting Hartsfield-Jackson and have developed the mission statement, "to be the world's best airport by exceeding customer expectations." In fact, Airport passengers participating in a worldwide survey conducted by the International Air Transport Association ranked Hartsfield-Jackson number one in overall passenger satisfaction for large hub airports in 2002.

In 1999, Mr. DeCosta and his staff completed the Airport's first Master Plan in 30 years. He is leading Hartsfield-Jackson's $5.4 billion-dollar expansion program, called the Hartsfield-Jackson Development Program (HJDP) – "Focus On the Future." Some of the major components of the HJDP include a new fifth runway and a new international terminal. Hartsfield-Jackson retained its title as the busiest airport in the world serving over 76 million passengers in 2002 as well. In the year 2000, Mr. DeCosta successfully oversaw the Y2K rollover and ensured operations at Hartsfield-Jackson were uninterrupted.

Benjamin Erulkar
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development
United States Economic Development Administration

Benjamin Erulkar has served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development since December, 2005. In this capacity, Mr. Erulkar is responsible for coordinating the day-to-day activities of the Economic Development Administration (EDA). Mr. Erulkar also directs the strategic planning efforts to fulfill EDA’s mission: to lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting innovation and competitiveness, preparing American regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy.

Prior to his appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary, Mr. Erulkar served as EDA’s Chief Counsel where he led and managed all aspects of EDA’s legal practice and policy – including working to secure EDA’s 2004 reauthorization legislation and promulgating a comprehensive revision of EDA’s regulations. Mr. Erulkar also served as counsel to the Strengthening America’s Communities Advisory Committee, a Federal Advisory Committee established by the Secretary of Commerce.

Mr. Erulkar holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, an M.A. with Distinction in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and an A.B. magna cum laude in Government from Harvard University.

Before joining EDA in 2003, Mr. Erulkar was an Associate with Vinson & Elkins L.L.P in Washington, D.C. from 1996-2003; an Associate with Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P in Washington, D.C. from 1992-1996; and an Insurance Officer with the Overseas private Investment Corporation in Washington, D.C. from June 1985-June 1989.

Dr. Richard Florida
International Best-Selling Author, Who's Your City?
Director, Martin Prosperity Institute
University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management

Richard Florida is one of the world's leading public intellectuals. Esquire Magazine recently named him one of the Best and Brightest in America. He is author of the international bestselling book, The Rise of the Creative Class. His ideas have been featured in major ad campaigns from BMW and Apple and are being used globally to change the way regions and nations do business.

He is regular columnist with the Globe and Mail newspaper and has written articles for the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and the Financial Times. He was a contributor to the 2004 Harvard Business Review’s List of Breakthrough Ideas. He is founder of the Creative Class Group, a global advisory services firm in Washington, DC. He is Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Florida has been a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT, and a visiting fellow of the Brookings Institution. Florida earned his Bachelor's degree from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

The Honorable Shirley Franklin
Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia

Shirley Franklin became Mayor of Atlanta in 2001. In her first role as an elected official, she also became the City’s first woman mayor, and the first African-American woman to serve as mayor of a major southern city. She won re-election in 2005 in a landslide victory with more than 90% of the vote.

While Mayor Franklin is a clever manager, she also took on the difficult task of restoring trust to a city that was skeptical of City Hall, following a previous administration that was rife with scandal and corruption. She inherited an $82 million budget deficit, which was about 20% of the entire city budget and $37 million more than initial estimations had indicated. The city's infrastructure was fraying and the sewers were leaking so badly that state and federal environmental agencies were fining Atlanta $20,000 a day. To balance the budget, she cut her own salary by $40,000, cut the Mayor’s department staff by 50%, eliminated 277 jobs, removed over 600 vacancies, and got the city council to approve a 1% sales-tax hike and a 50% increase to property taxes.

The Mayor combines no-nonsense business acumen with unconventional style and has a flair for fostering public-private partnerships. She sees herself as a driver for change and has initiated over twenty public-private task forces, which have brought in more than 75 private firms to help shape policy with City officials. Notably, she was able to get these firms to participate on a pro-bono basis, examining issues of the budget, infrastructure, and homeless problems. Her task force on the sewer issue, the Pothole Posse, in cooperation with the county and state officials, resulted in a complex set of loans and agreements to cover approximately $3 billion in upgrades and repairs to Atlanta's sewer system.

Critics argue that the Mayor’s pro-business policies, which have resulted in increased property values and higher real estate taxes, are pushing the poor out of the city. However, the Administration has made affordable workforce housing is a key feature of new development activities within the City including the Franklin-supported BeltLine project. The BeltLine project is an ambitious initiative that seeks to increase transit connectivity and foster affordable and livable communities along 22 miles of historic rail segments that encircle Atlanta’s urban core. The project is currently the largest and most wide-ranging urban redevelopment plan currently underway in the US, calls for 30,000 new jobs and a $20 billion increase in Atlanta's tax base over the next 25 years.

Since 2002, Franklin has turned in three balanced budgets, and in 2005 she reported an $18 million revenue surplus. The Mayor’s interest in promoting the City extends across the globe, as was witnessed in her 2006 trip Mayor Franklin to China, with the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, to help Delta Air Lines win a direct route to country and lobby officials to open a Chinese consulate in Atlanta.

During her first term, Mayor Franklin the first sitting Mayor to be awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation for her achievements.

Arthur C. Nelson, Ph.D.
Director of Metropolitan Research
Presidential Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning
College of Architecture + Planning
University of Utah

"Chris" (short for Christian) Nelson is the founding Director of the Center for the New Metropolis at the University of Utah where he is also Presidential Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning in the College of Architecture + Planning.

For the past thirty years, Dr. Nelson has conducted pioneering research in urban and regional development planning, public facility finance, economic development, and metropolitan development patterns. Numerous organizations have sponsored his work such as the National Science Foundation; National Academy of Sciences; U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Commerce (through the Economic Development Administration); Environmental Protection Agency; U.K. Department of the Environment; Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Fannie Mae Foundation; American Planning Association; National Association of Realtors; MacArthur Foundation; the Urban Land Institute; and the Brookings Institution among many others. His research and practice has led to 18 books and more than 200 other scholarly and professional publications.

Prior to academia, Dr. Nelson managed his own West Coast consultancy in planning and management, and he continues to provide professional planning and development consulting services. His professional planning, education, and research accomplishments were recognized through election to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a recognition shared by fewer than one percent of all planners. In 2000-01, he served HUD as an expert on smart growth and growth management for the Clinton and Bush Administrations. In this capacity, he helped expand HUD's research scholar programs and create HUD's doctoral fellowship program with an emphasis on creating a new generation urban economists and policy analysts.

Dr. Nelson has earned three teacher of the year honors at two universities (Kansas State University and twice at Georgia Tech), researcher of the year honors at a third (University of New Orleans), and scholar of the year honors at a fourth (Virginia Tech). He joins the elite ranks of presidential professors at the University of Utah, a distinction shared by fewer than one percent of all faculty. Dr. Nelson's books have shaped the current thinking about several planning fields. His papers have won national awards and international distinction. Dr. Nelson's students have won numerous national awards including the national student project of the year award given by the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Dr. Nelson?s current area of work is projecting future development opportunities and implications for metropolitan areas. This work has been reported in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and several times on the front page of USA Today.

John Rice
Vice Chairman, General Electric Company
President & CEO of GE Infrastructure

John G. Rice, 51, is Vice Chairman of GE and President & CEO of GE Infrastructure. This business segment includes Energy, Aviation, Rail, Oil & Gas, Water, Energy Financial Services, and Aviation Financial Services. Prior to his current position, Rice served as Vice Chairman of GE and President & CEO of GE Industrial.

Rice began his General Electric career in 1978 as a member of the Financial Management Program, moving to the GE Corporate Audit Staff in 1981. In 1984 he joined GE Appliances, having various assignments in operations and consumer service.

In 1992 Rice was named President and CEO of GE’s Canadian appliance affiliate in Toronto, Canada. He assumed leadership of the GE Corporate Audit Staff in 1994, and a year later was appointed President of GE Plastics Asia/Pacific business headquarters in Singapore. Rice was appointed President and CEO, GE Transportation Systems in Erie, Pennsylvania, in September 1997.

Rice was named President and CEO of GE Energy, a leading supplier of power generation technology, energy services, and energy management systems in November of 2000 through June of 2005.

Rice earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees there. Rice is also a trustee of various other institutions including Emory University and the Walker School, and is on the International Advisory Board of King Fahd University in Saudi Arabia. In addition, he is past chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. He and his wife Cammie have four sons and reside in Roswell, Georgia.

Roel Spee
Associate Partner, IBM Global Business Services
Global Leader, PLI-Global Location Strategies

Roel Spee is an associate partner with IBM Global Business Services and global leader of the PLI-Global Location Strategies service (aka IBM-PLI). He has over 20 years of experience as location strategy and economic development consultant.

Over the course of his career, he has built up huge expertise in advising international companies in location choices for a broad variety of industries and investment projects. He assisted corporate executives from international companies around the world with their strategic location choices for over 300 projects. Besides being a key advisor to IBM internally, external clients include over 200 companies such as Bayer, Citibank, Procter & Gamble, Shell, Sony, Toyota, Unilever, and many other leading global companies and fast growing companies in new emerging industries.

Moreover, Roel is one of the very few consultants globally that is able to leverage his broad pragmatic experience working directly with international companies in their location selection projects for advising investment promotion and economic development agencies: developing and implementing both marketing strategies to attract new and retain present businesses, as well as economic development strategies for improving business conditions in their regions. Customers worked for include over 100 public sector organizations as well as public-private partnerships worldwide. Many of these were assisted with multiple engagements leading to a total of over 300 economic development projects globally.

Roel is frequently quoted as location strategy and foreign investment expert in leading industry magazines and is a regular speaker at international events on corporate location decision-making and investment promotion strategies. He has spoken at events in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and USA.

Roel Spee is a core member of the Consultants Advisory Group to the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA), and member of the International Committee of the International Economic Development Council (IEDC).

J. Ronald Terwilliger
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Trammell Crow Residential

Mr. Terwilliger became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Trammell Crow Residential in 1986. Trammell Crow Residential is a national residential real estate company and is the largest developer of multi-family housing in the United States. Mr. Terwilliger is responsible for all residential development and operations conducted by Trammell Crow Residential in 23 offices throughout the United States.

Mr. Terwilliger is an honor graduate of the United States Naval Academy. After serving five years in the Navy, he received his MBA degree with High Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Business where he was elected a Baker Scholar. He is past-chairman of the Urban Land Institute where he continues to serve on the Governance Committee. He additionally is Chairman Emeritus of the Wharton Real Estate Center, is past Chairman of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership and is Chairman of the International Board of Directors of Habitat for Humanity.

Philanthropically Mr. Terwilliger has recently made a $5 million gift to establish the ULI Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing. Similarly, a $5 million gift to the Enterprise Foundation has created the Enterprise Terwilliger Fund – targeted to create 2,000 affordable homes annually.

He also currently serves as a Director of the Naval Academy Foundation, Subcommittee Chairman of the Naval Academy Athletic Committee and is immediate past Chairman of the National Association of Homebuilders Multifamily Leadership Board. He serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the Enterprise Board of Trustees.