Session 14: Economics, Markets, and Politics of Global Warming
Few issues will impact business as much as a serious effort to mitigate global warming. This session explores economic policy and supply-side and demand-side technologies as means of meeting global warming challenges while maintaining economic growth.
Sponsor: Corporate Planning Roundtable
Presentations
Links of Interest
Speakers
Sydney Smith Hicks
NABE Corporate Planning Roundtable Chair
Sydney Smith Hicks is currently a professional director and consultant. She serves on the board of Smart Start, Inc, an ignition interlock company. Smart Start produces ignition interlock devices, franchises nationally, currently in over 25 states, and is the largest company in its industry. Prior to her current focus, she was CEO of VECTORsgi, Inc. and Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy, for Metavante Corporation. VECTORsgi is a financial technology software and services company which Hicks sold to Metavante in November 2004. Its products and services are sold primarily to the top 125 banks in the U.S. Metavante is a $1.5B company delivering banking and payments technologies to financial services firms and businesses worldwide.
Hicks was CEO of VECTORsgi, Inc., from 2003 to 2006, where she was responsible for maximizing business performance and strategically guiding the growth and expansion of VECTORsgi. Under Hicks’ leadership VECTORsgi expanded product lines, increased sales, and generated increasing levels of profits. Prior to the acquisition by Metavante, VECTORsgi was owned by management and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners; Hicks was also a Board Member. Investors tripled their investment over 15 months.
Before VECTORsgi became private, Hicks was senior vice president of Sterling Commerce and CEO of the Banking Systems Division of Sterling Commerce, the predecessor of VECTORsgi. During Hicks’ tenure, she set the strategy to transform the company from mainframe technologies to distributed technologies. With the advent of Check 21, her company was positioned with new products, allowing the company to capture the market for image exchange. For more than six years prior to being CEO, she was vice president of Operations and Business Development where she led new business development, supervised product acquisitions and was responsible for managing the strategy, design, development, maintenance, installation services, training services, and customized consulting for 11 product solutions, containing over 50 products. Hicks joined Banking Systems as Director of Marketing for Item Processing Solutions in 1996.
Prior to Sterling Commerce, Hicks gained an extensive knowledge of banking and electronic transactions at NationsBank, a predecessor of Bank of America, where she served as senior vice president of Transaction Solutions and Image Initiatives. Hicks was chief economist for NCNB (and First Republic and InterFirst), financial economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a visiting scholar for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. During her career, she was on the board of the Electronic Check Clearing House Organization (ECCHO), was the founding chairman of the board of Payment Systems Network (PSN), now owned by The Clearing House Payments Company, and held various academic positions.
Hicks is currently on two not-for-profit boards in Dallas, is a Mentor/Advisor for STARTech Early Ventures, and is Chair of the Corporate Planning Committee of the National Association of Business Economists. Locally she has led several boards and organizations over the last 25 years, including IWFDallas.
Hicks earned both a master’s degree and a doctorate in Economics from Washington University (St. Louis). She also has a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Cornell College (Iowa), where she graduated with distinction in economics. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Cornell College’s Berry Center for Economics, Business, and Public Policy.
James Sweeney
Stanford University
James (Jim) Sweeney is Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. His professional activities focus on economic policy and analysis, particularly in energy, natural resources, and the environment.
At Stanford he has served as chairman of the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems, chairman of the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research, Director of the Energy Modeling Forum, Chairman of the Institute for Energy Studies, and Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research (now the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research). In the early 1970's he was Director of the Office of Energy Systems Modeling and Forecasting of the U.S. Federal Energy Administration. He was a founding member of the International Association for Energy Economics, co-editor of the Journal Resource and Energy Economics, and vice-president for publications of the International Association for Energy Economics. He is a Senior Fellow of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics and a Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology. He is on the National Advisory Council of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a member of Governor Schwarzenegger’s Council of Economic Advisors.
He holds a B.S. degree from MIT in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Engineering-Economic Systems.
Jane Hughes Turnbull
Peninsula Energy Partners
