November 11, 2024
President's Letter
Dear Members and Friends of NYABE,
I am honored to be the incoming President of New York Association for Business Economics (NYABE). I am joined by new Directors to the Board: VPs Tani Fukui and Yelena Shulyatyeva and the Treasurer Shan Ahmed. We are happy that our long-serving Secretary Carol Zytnik continues in this role. Madhavi Bokil is the Chair of the Programming Committee. I want to extend a special THANK YOU to our new Programming, Membership and Marketing & Media committee members who have volunteered their time to help us head into the upcoming 2025 year with a new strategic plan. I encourage you to visit our new website www.nyabe.org for the list of names of the committee members. Finally, I want to thank the past presidents who devoted considerable time and effort to advance the goals of the Association, notably Alan Goldman, Parul Jain, Dana Peterson, Maurine Haver and Dana Saporta.
We are living in challenging and exciting times for our profession, and at NYABE we aim to create programming to provide a forum to prominent economists and analysts to discuss current key topics in economics. We also provide networking and mentoring opportunities through in-person meetings in New York City. Please stay tuned for the upcoming events, including:
- Economists Panel on December 9th, 2024, featuring Constance Hunter, Chief Economist at Economist Intelligence Unit; Ethan Harris, former Chief Economist at Bank of America; Greg Daco Chief Economist at EY, and Dana Peterson, Chief Economist at the Conference Board. This meeting is open to current members and their guests.
- Our traditional Forecasters Panel in January hosted by the Canadian Consulate.
Other sessions are in the works and address topics such as Artificial Intelligence, immigration, U.S. fiscal outlook and U.S. trade policy. We welcome your suggestions and involvement regarding speakers, topics, and venues. The new NYABE leadership is working to reestablish a monthly cadence of meetings starting from January 2025.
- We want to thank those of you who have supported our organization through initiating memberships since September 2021. We appreciate your support, and we are extending your membership for another year starting from January 1st, 2025. As a token of appreciation, you will have an opportunity to attend one in-person event of your choice for no charge (This does not include Butler Award ceremony).
- For those who are not currently members, we are now offering a trial membership. Under this scheme, you will be able to attend two events of your choice between January 2025 through June 2025 under the same terms and for the same cost as a member (This does not include Butler Award ceremony). We hope you will consider becoming a member after the trial, but you are welcome to continue attending events as a guest.
For those I have not met, let me share with you my path towards becoming involved with NYABE. I joined NYABE in 2017 and I treasure the opportunities it gave me to stay on top of current economic topics, hear prominent industry, academic and government economists, and to network with the like-minded individuals in New York. It is my great honor to now carry the torch forward. I currently work as a Strategist at Bank of America in the Global Commodities Group. I have previously worked at the World Bank both in Washington DC and Yemen, worked at the Energy Policy Research Group at the University of Cambridge and held a fellowship at BLS. I have a PhD in Economics from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and master’s degrees from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and London School of Economics.
I look forward to seeing you at our sessions this year—please pass this letter on to anyone you know who may be interested in joining NYABE and attending our events.
Sincerely
Irina Shaorshadze
NYABE President 2024-2025