Meet the Team

Matthew Fienup, Ph.D.

Matthew is the Executive Director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF) at California Lutheran University. He teaches courses in Econometrics and Environmental Economics in the Masters of Quantitative Economics program. His specialties are applied econometric analysis, the economics of land use, and environmental markets.

Dan Hamilton, Ph.D.

Dan Hamilton is what they call “a numbers guy.” Dan began working with Economic Forecast models in 1997 and has now created a forecast model that is the envy of the industry. He has done forecasting for groups as diverse as Vandenberg Air Force Base, the County of Santa Barbara, the California Environmental Protection Agency (via the city of Santa Maria), Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, Shea Homes, the Towbes Group, the Ojai Sanitation District, and many others.

Jeff Speakes, Ph.D.

Jeff Speakes is Director of Financial Markets at California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting. Jeff is also president of Kern Economics, a firm specializing in economics consulting and market risk advisory services. He was formerly Senior Managing Director and Chief Economist at Countrywide Financial Corporation where he oversaw interest rate hedging, economic forecasting, and quantitative model development and validation. He was responsible for the design, development and ongoing management of Countrywide’s leading-edge servicing hedge operation.

Bill Watkins, Ph.D.

Bill Watkins, Founding Director of CERF, has been providing accurate, unflinching forecasts about the economic pulse of California, western states and the rest of the United States, for more than 15 years. He is a plain-spoken, no-holds-barred economist who studies the data and tells it like it is.

“Bill Watkins has the enviable ability to provide the simple-to-grasp explanations that are based on rigorous analysis of complex things. Sometimes it seems that we within the academy forget that our job is to make things easier to understand, not more difficult.”