SPEAKERS

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2008 Speaker Bios

Bradford P. Campbell
Assistant Secretary
Employee Benefits Security Administration
U.S. Department of Labor
Washington, D.C.

On August 3, 2007, Bradford P. Campbell was confirmed by the United States Senate as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Employee Benefits Security Administration, which oversees more than 700,000 covered retirement plans, approximately 2.5 million covered health plans, and similar numbers of other welfare benefit plans, such as those providing life or disability insurance. The employee benefit plans under EBSA’s jurisdiction hold about $5.6 trillion in assets and cover approximately 150 million Americans. He is responsible for the administration and enforcement of Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

Prior to his confirmation as Assistant Secretary, Mr. Campbell served as Acting Assistant Secretary since October 30, 2006 and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy since March 5, 2004. As Deputy Assistant Secretary, Mr. Campbell directed the policy, legislative and research functions of the Agency. He served as a liaison to other government agencies and the private sector on a variety of issues relating to ERISA.

Previously, Mr. Campbell was Senior Legislative Officer in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Labor where he represented the Department of Labor to the Congress on issues pertaining to ERISA and the Employee Benefits Security Administration. He joined the Department of Labor in 2001.

Prior to joining the Department of Labor, Mr. Campbell worked on Capitol Hill as Legislative Director for then-Congressman Ernest Fletcher and as Senior Legislative Assistant to former Congressman, and current SEC Chairman, Christopher Cox. Mr. Campbell received his A.B. from Harvard University, and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Craig P. Hoffman
Vice President and General Counsel
SunGard Relius LLC
Jacksonville, Florida

Craig P. Hoffman of Jacksonville, FL, is the Vice President and General Counsel of SunGard Relius LLC. He is a Fellow in the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel, and Past President of the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries, where he served as a member of the Board of Directors, and as the Co-Chair of the Government Affairs Committee. Mr. Hoffman was an expert speaker at the National Summit on Retirement Savings, and served as a charter member of the first IRS Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Governmental Entities. Mr. Hoffman is a frequent speaker at industry meetings and serves on the editorial boards of several pension journals.

Bruce L. Ashton, Esquire
Partner
Reish Luftman Reicher & Cohen
Los Angeles, California

Bruce Ashton is a partner of the law firm of Reish Luftman Reicher & Cohen, specializing in employee benefits and ESOP. In his 35 years of practice, Bruce has gained wide experience representing businesses in sophisticated business transactions, employee benefits matters, and employment law issues.

His practice today focuses on all aspects of employee benefits issues, including representing public and private sector plans and their sponsors, negotiating the resolution of plan qualification issues under EP Division settlement programs, advising and defending fiduciaries on their obligations and liabilities, and structuring qualified plans, non-qualified deferred compensation arrangements and health care arrangements. Combining his employee benefits and transactional expertise, Bruce is also active in the installation and funding of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).

Bruce served as President of the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries (ASPPA) for the 2003-2004 term. From 1998 through 2002, he served as the co-chair of ASPPA's Government Affairs Committee and has been a member of its board of directors since 1997. He is also president-elect of the Los Angeles Chapter Western Pension & Benefits Conference, and will serve as president for the 2008-2009 year. Bruce has been recognized as one of "The Best Lawyers in America," a "Super Lawyer" in Southern California  and one of the "Top Lawyers" in employee benefits by Corporate Counsel magazine.

Joan C. McDonagh
Manager 401(k) Technical Resources
Great-West Retirement Services
Glendale, Wisconsin

Joan received a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law in 1985 and subsequently practiced law in the employee benefits area. She has worked with Great-West Retirement Services® since 2004 and with its wholly owned subsidiary, EMJAY Corporation, since 1988. Joan’s areas of expertise include ERISA compliance, with an emphasis on fiduciary requirements.

Joan is a member of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin and American Bar Associations. She is on the Legislative Affairs Committee of ASPPA, the Government Relations Committee of SPARK, and is past Vice-President of Wisconsin Retirement Plan Professionals, Ltd. She has written numerous articles and presented a variety of seminars on issues related to qualified plan operation. She is a co-author of the 401(k) Answer Book in the Aspen Publishers Answer Book Series.

Craig Bellanger
Gulf Coast Area Manager, Employee Plan Examinations
Internal Revenue Service
New Orleans, Louisiana

Craig is the Gulf Coast Area Manager, Employee Plan Examinations with the Internal Revenue Service, Tax Exempt & Government Entities Operating Division. He is responsible for overseeing compliance activities for qualified retirement plans within the 11 state Gulf Coast Area. His office provides retirement plan sponsors, participants, and practitioners with the tools needed to understand and comply with pension law. In addition, he is responsible for ensuring that plans such as Simplified Employee Pensions, SIMPLE plans, 403(b) tax-sheltered annuities and IRC 457 government deferred compensation plans are also compliant.

Previously, Mr. Bellanger served as a Front-Line Manager for the Employee Plans Group out of New Orleans, LA. His area of coverage was Louisiana, Mississippi, South Alabama, and Houston.

Craig holds a B.S. degree in Accounting from Nicholls State University.

Nancy K. Webman
Editor
Pensions & Investments
Chicago, Illinois

Nancy K. Webman is editor of Pensions & Investments. Her duties include determining the editorial direction and content of P&I; its electronic publication, P&I Daily; and the website Pionline.com. She oversees a staff of 25 editors and reporters. She also is in charge of The Eddy Awards, P&I's annual competition honoring the best practices of 401(k) plan sponsors and service providers.

Nancy joined P&I in 1982 as a reporter, to open the Southwest bureau in Dallas. She became editor in mid-1997, and is based in Chicago. Previously,Nancy was a reporter and editor on daily newspapers in Texas, Florida and New York. She has a degree in newspaper journalism from Syracuse University.

Pensions & Investments is the international newspaper of institutional money management, covering institutional investors and the business of professionally managed money.

Steve Eischen
Regional Director
Department of Labor/EBSA
Kansas City, Missouri

Steven R. Eischen was appointed as Director of the Kansas City Regional Office of the Department’s Employee Benefit Security Administration (EBSA) effective June 12, 2004. In that capacity, he is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act as it relates to private sector employee benefit plans in 11 states.

From November 2001, he served as Regional Director of the U. S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration office in Dallas, Texas. There, he supervised the Enron investigation, one of the largest and most significant cases ever undertaken by the agency.

During his long service with EBSA, Mr. Eischen has frequently been called upon for special assignments. For example, he provided technical assistance on enforcement issues to the governments of Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia as those countries worked to establish private pension systems. He also made a presentation on enforcement issues to representatives of 17 countries at a pension reform seminar sponsored by the World Bank in Budapest, Hungary. For six years, he served as a fiduciary law instructor for EBSA’s basic training course for new investigators.