Steve Robinson, president of Owens Community College in Ohio, is a guest contributor for the College Promise Campaign. Those of us who work in America's community colleges are having a moment.

2008 Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation: Panelist and Moderator Biographies 2008 Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation: Panelist and Moderator BiographiesSteven E. Bochner is a Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, working from its Palo Alto, California office. Bochner has represented numerous start-up companies, as well as leading venture capital and investment banking firms.

He has served in various management positions at Wilson Sonsini, including as a member of the firm's Policy Committee and chair of its Compensation Committee, and is currently a member of the firm's Executive Management Committee. In 2005, he was appointed as a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies, where he served as chairman of the Governance and Disclosure Subcommittee. Bochner is now in his second term as co-chair of the Nasdaq Listing and Hearing Review Council. The council is responsible for making recommendations to the Nasdaq board on policy and rule changes related to issuer listing standards. He has also served on the California Department of Corporations' Securities Regulation Advisory Committee. Bochner received his J.D.

From the University of California Berkeley Law School and his B.S. From San Jose State University.David A. Bochnowski is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Northwest Indiana Bancorp. He is responsible for the Bank’s strategic direction including a focus on enhancing brand awareness and market share, risk management, operations, information technology and human resources, as well as financial reporting and controls. He has been the Chief Executive Officer since 1981 and became the Chairman in 1995. He has been a director since 1977 and was the Bank's legal counsel from 1977 to 1981.

Bochnowski is a past Chairman of America’s Community Bankers (ACB), now known as the new American Bankers Association (ABA) a national bank trade association. He is a former Chairman of the Indiana Department of Financial Institutions; former chairman of the Indiana League of Savings Institutions, now known as the Indiana Bankers Association; former director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis; and, a former member of the Federal Reserve Thrift Institutions Advisory Committee. Before joining the Bank, Mr. Bochnowski was an attorney, self-employed in private practice. He holds a Juris Doctorate degree from Georgetown University and a Masters Degree from Howard University. He served as an officer in the United States Army and is a Vietnam veteran.Brian V.

Breheny is the Deputy Director for Legal and Regulatory Policy in the Division of Corporation Finance at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Breheny has held this position since December 2007. He previously had served as the Chief of the Division's Office of Mergers and Acquisitions since July 2003. Breheny also just completed his fifth year as an adjunct securities law faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Prior to joining the SEC, Mr. Breheny worked for seven years as an Associate at Clifford Chance US LLP in its New York and London offices. While at Clifford Chance, he specialized in mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance matters and he also served for four years on the firm’s Personnel Committee.

Prior to attending law school, he worked for four years as a Certified Public Accountant with KPMG LLP in its New York office. He is also a member and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fair Chance, a Washington, DC based capacity building not-for-profit corporation, a member of the St. John’s University Board of Governors and a founding member of Law Preview LLC, a law school education company.

He received his JD, cum laude, from St. John’s University School of Law and his BS from St.

John’s University’s Peter J. Tobin School of Business Administration.Thomas W. Burke is the Senior Vice President and National Program Director/Chief Compliance Officer for Wells Fargo SBA Lending. He serves as liaison on behalf of Wells Fargo with SBA’s central office, regional offices and local district offices, developing and implementing marketing, compliance, technology, audit policies and procedures. He interacts on a regular basis with other governmental agencies, and other economic development organizations fostering positive working relationships that provide for financing and technical assistance opportunities for clients. He began his banking career at Norwest Bank in 1980. In 1999, Burke was named the Minnesota SBA Minority Small Business Advocate of the year.

In 2005, he was named the Minnesota SBA Small Business Champion of the year. Burke currently serves as board president of Redesign, Inc. An economic development company.

He also serves on the board for the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders (NAGGL). He earned his B.A. Degree in History from the University of Minnesota.Brian Bussey is Assistant Chief Counsel in the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets. Prior to his current position, Mr. Bussey served as counsel to SEC Chairmen Donaldson and Pitt, and Acting Chairman Unger, and as an attorney in the Division of Trading and Markets and the Office of General Counsel. Before coming to the SEC, Mr.

Bussey was a corporate associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago and served as a law clerk to the Honorable E. Grady Jolly on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School.Faith Colish is Counsel to Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP in New York. She specializes in regulatory advice to broker-dealers and other financial service industry participants. Since 2005 she has been Co-Chair of the ABA Task Force on Private Placement Broker-Dealers, of which she has been a member since its inception in 1999. Colish began her professional career in 1960 as an attorney in the SEC Office of General Counsel.

She served as Special Counsel in the SEC New York Regional Office (1966-1967). Her other jobs have included the Investment Company Institute; Scudder, Stevens & Clark; and private practice.

Since 1982 she has been an independent director of the investment companies managed by Neuberger Berman. Colish has been active in the work of the ABA Committee on Federal Regulation of Securities, other bar associations, and various NASD (now FINRA) and NASDAQ committees. She attended Smith College and graduated from the University of Michigan and Columbia Law School.Christopher Cox is the 28th Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. During his tenure at the SEC, Chairman Cox has made vigorous enforcement of the securities laws the agency's top priority, bringing ground breaking cases against a variety of market abuses including hedge fund insider trading, stock options backdating, fraud aimed at senior citizens, municipal securities fraud, and securities scams on the Internet. He has assumed leadership of the international effort to more closely integrate U.S. And overseas regulation in an era of global capital markets and international securities exchanges.

He has also championed transforming the SEC's system of mandated disclosure from a static, form-based approach to one that taps the power of interactive data to give investors qualitatively better information about companies, mutual funds, and investments of all kinds. In addition, as part of an overall focus on the needs of individual investors, Chairman Cox has reinvigorated the agency's initiative to provide important investor information in plain English. Chairman Cox simultaneously received an M.B.A. From Harvard Business School and a J.D.

From Harvard Law School, where he was an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He received a B.A. From the University of Southern California, graduating magna cum laude after pursuing an accelerated three-year course.Daniel Covitz is an Assistant Director and Chief of the Capital Markets Section in the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Research and Statistics. Over the years, he has written papers on a variety of corporate-finance topics, including bank profitability, conflicts at rating agencies, incentive mechanisms in private-equity contracts, corporate-bond issuance, and commercial-paper pricing. He also served as a senior macro/financial economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisors from 2005-2006. He joined the Board in 1997 after receiving his doctorate in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.Denise Voigt Crawford is the Securities Commissioner of the state of Texas. She is also President-Elect of the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), an association whose membership consists of the 67 state, provincial, and territorial securities administrators in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S.

Virgin Islands, Canada, and Mexico. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), a congressionally-funded, non-profit corporation whose members are primarily law enforcement agencies, state regulatory bodies with criminal investigative authority, and state and local prosecutors. She is a former Lead Trustee of the Investor Protection Trust (IPT), a non-profit corporation that supports non-commercial investor education. Crawford has served on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Consumer Affairs Advisory Committee, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Global Markets Advisory Committee, the State Bar of Texas Securities Law Committee, and the Consumer Advisory Council of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. She has been honored for outstanding leadership by the Texas Governor’s Commission for Women and is a recipient of NASAA’s Blue Sky Cube, the organization’s highest honor. Crawford received her B.A. From the University of Texas at Austin and her J.D.

Mary’s University School of Law.Kristina Fausti is a Special Counsel in the Office of Chief Counsel, Division of Trading and Markets, at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where she has practiced for four years. Prior to joining the Commission, she was with Troutman Sanders LLP in its Washington, D.C. Office for two years and specialized in federal energy regulation. Fausti earned her J.D.

At Georgetown University and her B.S.B.A. In Accounting at Robert Morris University.Aaron M. Gurewitz is a Managing Director and Head of ROTH Capital Partners Equity Capital Markets Department. Prior to rejoining ROTH Capital Partners, Mr.

Gurewitz was a Senior Vice President in the Investment Banking Group at Friedman Billings Ramsey. From 1995 to 1998, Mr. Gurewitz was a Vice President in the Corporate Finance Department at ROTH Capital Partners. Gurewitz formerly worked at Wedbush Morgan Securities, Prudential Securities and Wells Fargo Bank.

Gurewitz graduated summa cum laude in 1991 from San Diego State University with a B.S. In Finance.James W. Hammersley has served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning of the U. Small Business Administration since April 2008. He is responsible for evaluating the existing policies and programs of the Small Business Administration and translating economic, social and demographic trends into policy prescriptions that will allow the Agency to be more proactive in addressing the needs of small business. Hammersley joined SBA in 1977 and has spent most of his career in the Financial Assistance Programs. From April 2000 to April 2008, he served as the Director of the Office of Loan Programs.

In this position, he was responsible for loan policy development for SBA’s Section 7(a) Guaranteed Business Loan Program and Section 504 Certified Development Company Loan Program. Annual loan production for these two programs exceeded $20 billion dollars. He also oversaw SBA’s secondary market program and loan pooling program. He has worked on many improvements to the lending programs including SBA Express and the Preferred Lenders Program. He also headed the team that developed the structure for the securitization of the unguaranteed portion of Section 7(a) loans.

During his career at SBA, Mr. Hammersley received both the Distinguished Service Award and the Meritorious Service Award. Hammersley has a B.S. Degree in Finance from the University of Virginia and a M.B.A.

Degree from the College of William and Mary, where he was elected to Beta Gamma Sigma.Shane B. Hansen is a partner and co-chairs the Broker-Dealer and Investment Adviser Practice Group in the law firm of Warner Norcross & Judd LLP. His law practice concentrates in the area of financial services regulation, including federal and state securities and banking laws. His securities-related experience includes acquisitions, membership and change of control applications with FINRA; broker-dealer and investment adviser compliance issues; consumer privacy and data security; compliance and procedure manuals; bank-brokerage networking relationships; account-related forms and contracts; representative agreements; and securities offerings and related documentation.

His banking-related experience includes acquisitions and sales of banks, bank holding companies, thrifts, branches, mortgage and servicing rights portfolios; analysis of competitive effects of bank mergers and acquisitions; analysis of banking powers and regulations governing various banking-related investments and activities; and formations and securities offerings by banks, bank holding companies, and mortgage companies. He has worked extensively with federal and state securities and banking regulators on a wide range of regulatory issues. Shane graduated with honors from the University of Michigan Law School in 1982. He graduated with high honors from Albion College in 1979.John D. Hogoboom is a founding Member of Lowenstein Sandler PC, Roseland, New Jersey. Hogoboom concentrates his practice in securities and mergers and acquisitions.

He frequently represents entrepreneurs in the establishment, funding and growth of new ventures, including the negotiation of venture capital investments and strategic alliances. He has represented a number of companies in initial public offerings and registered secondaries.

He has represented both buyers and sellers in all types of acquisitions and disposition transactions. Hogoboom received his B.S. Degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his J.D.

Degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, cum laude, where he served on the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.Kara Jenny is Chief Financial Officer of Bluefly, Inc., the online destination offering exclusive designer merchandise. Jenny joined Bluefly in 1999 as Vice President of Finance and was appointed Chief Financial Officer in March 2008.

She has been instrumental in the development of the company's financial strategy and manages the day-to-day financial and accounting operations. In her tenure at Bluefly, she has been a key contributor in helping to scale the company's business through streamlining the finance and accounting operations, managing vendor relationships, and raising capital. Jenny oversees the SOX and SEC compliance efforts throughout the company and has created and managed the strategic and annual planning processes. She has also been a key contributor in facilitating several rounds of equity financing, including preferred stock offerings, PIPE's, rights offerings, and common stock offerings.

Prior to joining Bluefly, Ms. Jenny was an Experienced Audit Manager at Arthur Andersen LLP. She spent 8 years in their New York Office's Enterprise Group which serviced the needs of small businesses. In addition to providing audit and advisory services, she was involved in various transactions including acquisitions, public offerings, private equity and debt offerings, primarily in the retail and technology arena. Jenny is a Certified Public Accountant and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.Karen Kerrigan is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, an advocacy and research organization she founded in 1994.

She is Founder of Women Entrepreneurs Inc. (WE Inc.), a nonprofit business association that helps women business owners succeed through education, networking and advocacy. Kerrigan regularly testifies before the U.S.

Congress, appears on major news shows, and serves as a guest on hundreds of radio talk shows on issues that impact America's small business and entrepreneurial sector. Her commentary, analysis and written work have appeared in many of the nation's leading newspapers. She meets often with delegations from around the world that wish to learn about public policy recommendations and Best Practices in entrepreneurial training that will enhance and sustain business start-up and growth. For more than a decade she wrote a regular column for the American City Business Journals, an influential network of weekly business newspapers in 50 major markets. Kerrigan is a native of New York, and holds a B.A. Degree in Political Science from Cortland College (SUNY).Gerald J. Laporte serves as Chief of the Office of Small Business Policy in the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, Washington, D.C.

He has practiced law in Washington, D.C. Since 1976, including a previous period at the SEC from 1982 to 1987. Before rejoining the SEC in late 2002, Mr. Laporte practiced with the firm of Hogan & Hartson LLP. From 1997 to 1998, Mr.

Laporte served as Chairman of the Corporation, Finance and Securities Law Section of the District of Columbia Bar. He holds a J.D.

Degree, awarded with honors, from the George Washington University Law School, where he was Managing Editor of the law review. He also holds an M.A. Degree in political science from Georgetown University, and degrees from the University of Ottawa, Canada, and Sacred Heart Seminary College, Detroit.William D. Lutz is Professor of English at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. As an expert on plain language, Dr.

Lutz has worked with numerous corporations and government agencies. He has re-written mutual fund prospectuses into plain language; written the MD&A and Financial Notes sections of annual reports into plain language; written IPO prospectus in plain language; written, revised, and edited the prose in annual reports; written corporate Web sites; conducted workshops on plain language and clear communication in various forms of corporate and legal publications; and served as an expert witness on language and plain language in legal proceedings. As a consultant on plain language to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Dr. Lutz helped prepare the SEC’s Plain English Handbook. Lutz was the head of the Committee on Public Doublespeak for 15 years, and editor of the Quarterly Review of Doublespeak for 14 years.

He has appeared on numerous television and radio programs to publicize the dangers of doublespeak, including Today, Larry King Live, The CBS Evening News, The MacNeil Lehrer NewsHour, and National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife, the novelist Denise Gess. In addition to a Ph.D. In English, he holds a Doctor of Law degree and is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar.Chad Moutray is the Chief Economist and Director of at the U.S. Small Business Administration. The Office of Advocacy, the “small business watchdog” of the federal government, examines the role and status of small business in the economy and independently represents the views of small business to federal agencies, Congress, and the President.

Moutray joined the Office of Advocacy in October 2002 and is responsible for the development and administration of the economic research agenda as it relates to the role of entrepreneurs in the economy and policy-relevant issues that are central to small business owners. He is also responsible for increasing the awareness of the Office of Advocacy and its research. Prior to joining Advocacy, Mr.

Moutray was the Dean of the School of Business Administration at Robert Morris College (RMC) in Chicago from 1998 to 2002, where he taught economics and finance courses. He also served as a visiting professor at Kasem Bundit University in Bangkok, Thailand.

He has a Ph.D. In economics from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and an M.A. In economics from Eastern Illinois University.E. Rogers Novak, Jr.

Brings over 25 years of experience as a venture capitalist, 'angel' investor, and operating principal. Novak Biddle Venture Partners is a premier early stage venture capital firm backed by some of the country’s most prestigious investors. Novak participated in President Bush’s High Technology Summit at the White House. The summit was a forum of the nation’s top business and technology executives, who discussed strategies for a national technology agenda. A frequent speaker on venture capital, risk and innovation issues, he has spoken before the National Institute of Science and Technology, the World Bank/IFC, DARPA, and many other institutions. He has also advised members of Congress and government agencies, about ways the public and private sector can work together to improve the nation’s high-tech economy. A frequent contributor to the local and national media on technology and investment issues, Mr.

Novak has appeared on The McNeil Lehrer Newshour, CNN, CNNfN, Wall Street Week and other programs. Recently, he was named the winner of the 2007 Early Stage East Sal Buccieri Memorial Venture Impact Award. The honor recognizes an individual who has clearly impacted early stage technology and fast growth opportunities.

Novak received a B.A. Degree from Kenyon College.Kenneth R.

Pelowski is a Founder & Managing Partner of Pinnacle Ventures. Pelowski founded Pinnacle while working at Redpoint Ventures. He founded and was Chairman of the Board of Currenex, which was acquired by State Street for $560 million.

He was Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and a Board Director of GetThere (a Brentwood Venture Capital/USVP portfolio company), where he led its IPO as well as its $750 million acquisition by Sabre. He also served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Preview Travel (a Kleiner Perkins portfolio company) which acquired and changed its name to Travelocity. Ken led Preview’s IPO. Pelowski was also a Corporate Vice President and Executive Committee Member at General Instruments and at Quantum Corporation where he was responsible for corporate strategy and business development. He has held senior management positions in sales and marketing at Sun Microsystems and Intel.

He currently serves as a board member on several privately held companies and nonprofit organizations. He received a B.S.E. In electrical engineering and an M.B.A. From the University of Michigan.Ned Pollock is a Deputy Comptroller for Credit and Market Risk at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

Pollock oversees all activities related to retail and commercial credit. He advises OCC's National Risk Committee and the Committee on Bank Supervision and provides expertise and support to national bank examiners in the field. Pollock joined OCC in June 1976. Pollock previously had served as Examiner-In-Charge at JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., since 2004. He also served as Examiner-In-Charge at Bank One in Chicago from March 2002 through November 2004 and at MBNA in Wilmington from 1992 through 1995. Pollock's other duties at the OCC have included tours as the Senior Advisor to the Senior Deputy Comptroller for Bank Supervision and as the Assistant Deputy Comptroller for the OCC's Northern Pennsylvania Field Office.

Pollock graduated from Penn State University in 1975 where he majored in Finance and earned a bachelor of sciences degree in Business Administration. He graduated from the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at the University of Delaware in 1989.Michael Ribet is Managing Director at Focus Capital Advisors, a mid-market M&A advisory firm. Ribet previously spent 6 years as a partner at Capital Results LLC, a Chicago investment banking firm.

He has completed numerous transactions representing both buyers and sellers. He specializes in recapitalizations and private equity acquisitions. Ribet was CEO of two information technology companies during the nineties, Internet Dynamics and Nexiv. Earlier he spent 15 years at IBM in sales and marketing management. Ribet has a B.A. In Mathematics and Computer Science from New York University and an M.B.A. From the University of San Francisco.

Michael is the President of the Mid-west Business Brokers and Intermediaries (MBBI).Dennis Roberts is founder and Chairman of The McLean Group, LLC, a US middle-market investment bank providing mergers and acquisitions (M&A), capital formation, business valuation, litigation support, exit planning and market intelligence services. Roberts has more than 35 years of accounting and investment-banking experience. Roberts was the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of a publicly-held national bank from 1984 to 1992.

He was Founder and Senior Partner of a large Washington, DC area accounting firm that he sold to his partners in 1987. While a practicing Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Mr.

Roberts focused on mergers & acquisitions (M&A), commercial finance, and similar transactions. A graduate of Benjamin Franklin University (which subsequently merged with George Washington University), Mr. Roberts is a Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA). He also is Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) by The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and is an enrolled Federal Tax Accountant. He is a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) registered representative and firm principal (Series 7, 24, 28, 63).Andrew Sherman joined Dickstein Shapiro as a partner in the Corporate & Finance Practice in February 2005. Sherman focuses his practice on issues affecting business growth for companies at all stages, including developing strategies to leverage intellectual property and technology assets, as well as international corporate transactional and franchising matters. Sherman is the author of 17 books on the legal and strategic aspects of business growth, franchising, capital formation, and the leveraging of intellectual property.

He also has written many articles on similar topics for a variety of trade and business publications. Sherman is ranked in the 2007 and 2008 editions of Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business as a leading individual in the area of Corporate/M&A and Private Equity for the District of Columbia. Sherman obtained a B.A. Degree from University of Maryland at College Park and a J.D. Degree from the Washington College of Law at American University.Gregory C. Yadley is a Partner in the corporate practice group in the Tampa, Florida office of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP.

His principal areas of practice are securities, mergers and acquisitions, banking, corporate and general business law. Yadley has represented business entities of all sizes, including closely-held and family businesses and large and small public companies. He regularly represents these clients in financing transactions, mergers and acquisitions, contract negotiations and disputes, strategic planning, legal compliance and general corporate matters.

He has extensive experience in securities matters, including advising clients with regard to their private and public offerings of securities (including initial public offerings) and their ongoing disclosure obligations. Yadley is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, a frequent lecturer and contributor to legal periodicals, Co-Editor of The Florida Bar Florida Corporate Practice Manual and Co-Director of the annual Federal Securities Institute. Yadley obtained his B.A.

Degree cum laude with Highest Honors in English, from Dartmouth College and received his J.D. Degree cum laude from George Washington University.