Paul Horvath

Mr. Paul Horvath is Group Chief Executive Officer for Orchard Global Capital Group. Prior to co-founding the firm, Mr. Horvath was Global Head of Synthetic Credit Origination, Structuring and Distribution at Merrill Lynch from 2005 to 2008. From 1999 to 2005, Mr. Horvath was Global Co-Head of Structured Credit Distribution at JPMorgan, where he helped to grow the nascent credit derivatives market. Mr. Horvath began his career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he monitored the MBS market, as well as the bank and thrift sector. He received his BS in economics and international relations from Georgetown University and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. Mr. Horvath is a Trustee of the National Cathedral School as well as serving on their Finance and Investment Committees. He is also on the Borad of Regents of Georgetown University and is an active meber of the Johns Hopkins Physics and Astronomy Advisory Council.

Ambassador Richard Carlson (Ret)

Ambassador Richard Carlson brings a long career of experience in the media, government service, and diplomacy. He served as U.S. Ambassador to the Seychelles,
the director-general of Voice of America, and the President and CEO of both the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and King World Public Television.

Carlson is an experienced diplomat. As Voice of America director, he led official U.S. delegations to the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and other countries. He also has testified numerous times before congressional committees and before both the British House of Commons and the Israeli Knesset. He has also been an advisor to the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence in Washington, D.C., founded by Buck Revel, former assistant director of the FBI in charge of counter-terrorism, and R. James Woolsey, former CIA director.

Carlson has written for Time and Look magazines and has worked as a correspondent for ABC-TV. He has won three Hollywood Emmys, four Golden Mike Awards, and the Prestigious George Foster Peabody Award.

Lew W. Cramer

Mr. Lew W. Cramer serves as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Coldwell Banker Commercial Advisors, which is the largest commercial real estate company in the intermountain west with over $1.75 billion in transactions last year. He also serves as a Trustee of the American Management Association, and as former member of the U.S. Department of State’s International Communications and Information Policy Advisory Board and Special Advisor to the President of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. Mr. Cramer directed the World Trade Center Utah from 2006 to 2013, helping Utah triple its international exports during that period.

Mr. Cramer has worked extensively in the global telecommunications and broadband sectors. His involvement included Vice President for MediaOne International and US WEST, where he was responsible for international government and multilateral financial institution relations and public policy for numerous wireless and broadband investments in over 20 countries worldwide.

Mr. Cramer has served as a Board Member of the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute and as an Adjunct Professor of Georgetown University.

During the Reagan administration, Mr. Cramer served as a White House Fellow, a Deputy Assistant Commerce Secretary, and the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for International Trade. In the first Bush Administration, he served as Director General of the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service, where he led the U.S. Government’s commercial staff of 1400 employees at over 120 embassies overseas and in 100 offices throughout the United States. He also practiced real estate law in Los Angeles and in the San Francisco Bay area. For many years, he taught real estate law at the business schools of the University of Southern California and international business at Georgetown University. Mr. Cramer holds BA and JD degrees with honors from Brigham Young University.

Congressman Ernest Istook (Ret)

Congressman Istook provides extensive policy experience, and insight from 25 years in local, state, and federal elected office, including 14 years as U.S. Congressman for the 5th District of Oklahoma.

Prior to his political career, Istook spent 15 years practicing law, six years as a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and five years as a political reporter with countless TV and radio appearances. He has published a multitude of written articles and podcasts and worked as a talk radio host and a fill-in for several of America’s most popular radio hosts. He also was selected to teach as a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in 2010.

Istook won the Republican nomination for Governor of Oklahoma in 2006, leaving the Congress to enter that race. He continues to maintain relationships with his former colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served 14 years on the Appropriations Committee, which covered essentially the entire federal government and an unlimited number of issues.

While serving in Congress, Istook chaired subcommittees with jurisdiction over all spending for transportation (road, air, rail, and transit), for the White House and Executive Office of the President, Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service, Customs Service, General Services Administration, Office of Management and Budget, Office of Personnel Management, Secret Service, and the original Office of Homeland Security, as well as oversight for the U.S. Postal Service.

Istook also served on the subcommittees for National Defense, Military Construction, Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, National Labor Relations Board, National Institutes of Health, and more. He also was an original member when the House established its Homeland Security Committee.

He has led a trade mission to China, led a post-war delegation to Baghdad, inspected nuclear storage facilities in Russia, participated in military exercises, visited refugee camps in Bosnia and Albania, and met with heads of state in Israel, Mexico, Taiwan, and Syria, plus other national leaders across the globe.

Native to Fort Worth, Texas, Istook moved to Oklahoma shortly after he graduated from Baylor University. His law degree is from Oklahoma City University.

His experience as a city councilman, state legislator, library system chairman, and head of a state agency keep Istook mindful of the multi-faceted nature and relationship of America.

Dr. Michael Czinkota

Michael R. Czinkota is on the faculty of marketing and international business of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He served the U.S. government as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce, as head of the U.S. Delegation to the OECD Industry Committee in Paris and as senior trade advisor for Export Controls.

Dr. Czinkota has testified 12 times before Congress and is a sought-after speaker for businesses. He was listed as one of the three most published contributors to international business research in the world by the Journal of International Business Studies. His key books (of 42) are International Marketing (10th edition), with I. Ronkainen, and International Business (8th edition) with I. Ronkainen and M. Moffett.

He was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the United Kingdom, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Marketing Association. He holds honorary degrees from the Universidad Pontificia Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic and the Universidad del Pacifico in Lima, Peru. In the fall of 2012, the Universidad Ricardo Palma of Lima, Peru, named its new International Business and Marketing School after Czinkota.

Jozsef Szamosfalvi

Mr. Szamosfalvi, Managing Director of ExWorks Capital (www.exworkscapital.com), has specialized in emerging market project and structured finance underwriting and risk mitigation with a focus on infrastructure, financial and energy sector projects overseas. He has advised several regional and super-regional commercial banks on international trade and project finance transactions, credit underwriting standards, and provided fair market value analysis and led or advised on mergers and acquisition projects in the manufacturing, and biofuels industries. He has served as acting CFO for a 40-year old international construction, and an international geospatial intelligence company, among others.

Previously, Mr. Szamosfalvi has worked on venture capital and private equity structuring and modeling, being in charge of Summit Venture’s Community Development and Commercialization Venture Capital program. In the beginning of his career, he has worked for the United Nations (IAEA), for the Division of Planning, Co-ordination and Evaluation.

Mr. Szamosfalvi is a graduate of Brigham Young University (magna cum laude) with a double major in Economics and International Politics, Mr. Szamosfalvi has been an adjunct instructor at Georgetown University’s School of Business. He is member of the CFA Institute, and the New York Society of Security Analysts. He contributed to several business publications, including Beard & Thomas’ Trade Finance Handbook (Thomson 2006) and has been featured on several panels of the Commercial Finance Association, National Association of Credit Management, and the Global Midwest Alliance regarding financing transactions in international markets.