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Tristan Couvares, a 2008 Economics B.A., was recently the main subject of a new reality show, ControlTV. He is followed all day, as usual for a reality show, but viewers can influence what he is to do during the day through online votes.
ControlTV is created by Seth Green and Matt Senreich, who are also involved in other ventures such as Robot Chicken.
Most students begin their careers in earnest when they graduate from college. But Ross Mayer (BA Economics 1970) started his career in college, selling life insurance policies to students, Storrs residents and others in Connecticut and New York. He was so good at it that Connecticut General Life Insurance Company hired him right out of UConn, eventually making him a branch manager in Boston. Ten years later, he set out on his own.
His commitment to learning the business – and to connecting with his clients – defined his career. A full-service financial planner who is an associate of Commonwealth Financial Group, a MassMutual agency in Boston, he recently established a President’s Challenge Award for a UConn economics student in need.
Mayer had made a planned gift to UConn earlier, after he received a diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer. But with the help of a UConn Foundation development officer, who, Mayer says, “really had the kids at UConn at heart,” he created the scholarship to have an impact now, during his lifetime.
For a complete story, see Our Moment, the UConn Foundation’s e-newsletter.
Since graduating in May 2007, with a major in Economics and a minor in Business, Teju Owoye served as an Account Manager at Aetna’s corporate offices in Charlotte, North Carolina. Working in Aetna’s National Accounts division, she managed the company’s relationship with nine major employers that have health insurance contracts with Aetna. While at Aetna, Teju also directed activities related to the company’s $225,000 investment in the American Heart Association’s “Start Charlotte” program—an effort to promote better health habits within corporations and the community. Teju’s contributions to the program were highlighted in the September 2009 issue of Corporate Incentive Travel and the Spring 2010 issue of Ballantyne Magazine. In 2008, Aetna recognized Teju’s accomplishments by selecting her for the Aetna Way Excellence Award in Leadership.
During her tenure at Aetna, Teju developed a passion for helping individuals achieve their health and wellness goals through positive lifestyle changes. She is the founder of the Inspire Change Workshop, which is a seminar designed to teach corporate employees how make time for healthy eating and exercise during the day. Recently, Teju left Aetna to pursue her passion full time in San Diego, CA. She is currently working as a personal trainer in Solana Beach, CA. She also is piloting the Inspire Change Workshop in California, while starting a health and fitness consulting business.
Teju plans to continue her education by pursuing a master’s degree in health policy, and she is currently co-authoring a paper (“The Impact of Current Global Economic and Financial Crisis on the Economies of Emerging and Developing Regions”) with her father, Dr. Oluwole Owoye, a Professor of Economics at Western Connecticut State University.
Noted economist, fund manager, entrepreneur, race car builder, and UCONN alumnus Warren Mosler is seeking the office of US Senate to add ‘fixed the US economy’ to his long list of accomplishments. Mosler, a native of Connecticut who graduated from Storrs with a B. A. in Economics in 1971 is running for the US Senate seat being vacated by Senator Christopher Dodd.
Since graduation, Warren has spent 37 years in various financial institutions from Manchester, Hartford, New York, Chicago, and South Florida, including the founding III Offshore Advisors in 1982 and, in 1983, AVM L.P., a broker/dealer providing advanced financial services to large institutional clients. During these years he developed numerous investing strategies utilizing US Government securities and created the mortgage swap and euro swap futures contract. He maintains strong connections to the academic world as Co-Founder, along with L. Randall Wray, of the Center for Full Employment And Price Stability at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Mosler also has supported research projects and graduate students at the London School of Economics, the New School, Harvard University, and the University of Newcastle, Australia. Additionally, Warren is an Associate Fellow at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Warren is the author of numerous publications, of which the latest is ‘The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy’ (Mosler, 2010), which challenges several contemporary assumptions about the relationship between government spending, federal debt, and taxation and opens the door to an immediate return to economic prosperity.
Warren is the original contemporary proponent of what has come to be called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT begins with the operational fact that Federal taxes serve to regulate aggregate demand, rather than to raise revenue per se, and that funds to pay Federal taxes indeed originate from government spending itself. Warren’s campaign platform is based on three proposals designed to fix the nation’s economy within 90 days. The three proposals are as follows:
- Declare a “payroll tax holiday” where the U.S. Treasury will suspend deduction of all FICA taxes. That means the take home pay of someone earning $50,000 a year will rise by approximately $325 per month, fixing the economy from the bottom up, vs the current top-down bailout method.
- An unrestricted $500 per capita Federal revenue sharing distribution to all the State governments. This proposal mean about $1.75 billion for Connecticut.
- Fund an $8/hr. National Service Jobs program for anyone willing and able to work to facilitate the transition from unemployment to private sector employment, as the first two proposals will cause the large increases in private sectors business sales that quickly translates into the millions of new jobs we desperately need.
Since leaving Connecticut for Wall Street in 1976, Warren has lived and worked in New York City, Chicago, South Florida, and the US Virgin Islands. Additionally, while in Florida, he founded Mosler Automotive, which produces the world’s top performing sport cars. Warren returned to Connecticut this year to run for the US Senate solely as a matter of conscience, and not ambition. He sees himself as uniquely qualified to fix the economic problems facing the US economy.
Roger Ballentine, 1985 Honors Economics BA, will be recognized on April 30 by the UConn Honors program as one of the 2010 Honors Distinguished Alumni Award Recipients. Mr. Ballentine is President of Green Strategies Inc., an environmental consulting firm based in Washinction, D.C., working with clients in the energy and environmental arena on public policy matters, investment guidance in the “clean tech” marketplace, marketing and business development strategies, sustainability, and capital formation. Mr. Ballentine was a senior member of the White House staff in the Clinton Administration as Chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force and Deputy Assistant to the President for Environmental Initiatives. Previous to these duties, he was Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, where he focused on energy and environmental issues. He is a frequent radio and television commentator.
Mr. Ballentine graduated magna cum laude from UConn, then cum laude from the Harvard Law School. He is a member of the bar in Connecticut, the District of Columbia and the US Supreme Court. He serves on many boards, in particular as founding board member of the American Council on Renewable Energy and on the International Advisory Council of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He is also a Lecturer at the Harvard Law School, teaching in the area of energy and climate policy, and a Senior Fellow at the Progessive Policy Institute.
When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke speaks about economic issues, the nation listens. But who does Bernanke listen to?
One person on the short list is David J. Stockton ’76 B.A., ’76 M.A., who speaks almost daily with Bernanke in his role as chief economist for the Fed, the agency that directs the nation’s central bank, establishes national monetary policy and monitors the country’s economic health.
As director of the Federal Reserve’s Division of Research and Statistics, Stockton oversees one of the world’s largest economic research teams – approximately 290 economists, financial analysts, computer scientists, research assistants and other personnel. Stockton and his staff sort through and interpret information streaming from the country’s financial markets each day. One of Stockton’s primary responsibilities is presenting periodic economic forecasts to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on job losses, housing wealth and business spending. These reports help to determine how much you pay in interest on your credit card and how much banks may charge you for taking out home or auto loans.
Read more in the UConn Alumni Magazine.
UConn Econ Blog 