December 10, 2019 | Washington, DC

SPEAKER BIOS

Opening Remarks

Noah Joshua Phillips is a Commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Before coming to the

FTC, he served as Chief Counsel for U.S. Senator John Cornyn on the Senate Judiciary Committee. From

2011‐2018, he advised Senator Cornyn on legal and policy matters in antitrust, constitutional law,

consumer privacy, fraud, and intellectual property. Prior to his Senate service, he worked as a litigator

at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Steptoe & Johnson LLP. He began his career at Wasserstein

Perella & Co., an investment bank in New York City. He received his A.B. from Dartmouth College and

his J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Presentation

Peggy Twohig is currently the Assistant Director for Supervision Policy at the Consumer Financial

Protection Bureau (CFPB). The Office of Supervision Policy is responsible for developing supervision

strategy across bank and nonbank markets and ensuring that policy decisions are consistent across

markets, charters, and regions. Prior to her work at the CFPB, she was Director of the Office of

Consumer Protection at the Department of the Treasury, where she worked on the proposal to create

a new consumer agency as part of financial regulatory reform. Immediately before joining Treasury,

she served as Associate Director of the Division of Financial Practices at the Federal Trade Commission.

Her 17‐year tenure at the FTC focused on enforcement and policy issues related to consumer financial

services. Her career also included work as a litigator with the firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington,

D.C. She received her law degree from the New York University School of Law and a Master’s degree in

public policy from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1983. After

law school, she clerked for the Honorable William K. Thomas in United States District Court for the

Northern District of Ohio.

Panel 1: Furnisher Practice and Compliance with Accuracy Requirements

Leslie Bender is the Chief Strategy Officer and General Counsel for BCA Financial Services, Inc., a

Miami, Florida headquartered financial services company. She is a Past President of ACA International,

the international trade association of credit and collections professionals. She serves on the Steering

Committee for the Consumer Relations Consortium and in 2017 collaborated with Consumer Action to

produce a teleseminar for legal aid offices on helping legal aid clients understand collections calls. She
                     

   

                         

                             

                                 

                             

                               

                                   

     

                             

                           

                                 

                           

                                   

                          

                         

                         

                               

                           

                     

                           

                                 

                     

                           

                         

                           

                                 

                               

                     

               

                   

                           

                                   

                         

                         

has authored several comprehensive professional education programs for compliance officers and

compliance attorneys.

Francis Creighton is President & Chief Executive Officer of the Consumer Data Industry Association

(CDIA). Before joining CDIA, he was Executive Vice President of Government Affairs at the Financial

Services Roundtable. A long‐time veteran of Capitol Hill, he previously served as Chief of Staff to U.S.

Senator Chris Murphy. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University, where

he is an adjunct faculty member, and received his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and History

from the University at Albany, State University of New York. He lives in the Washington, DC area with

his wife, Julia.

Syed Ejaz is a Policy Analyst at Consumer Reports (CR), where he advocates on credit reporting,

mandatory arbitration, higher education, and consumer finance issues. He is CRs’ expert on credit

reporting and fights each day to ensure that consumers have easy access to accurate credit reports. He

regularly advocates on Capitol Hill for a safe, transparent, and accountable financial marketplace. He

came to CR from the U.S. Senate, where he served as Correspondent Aide for Sen. Claire McCaskill. He

graduated from the University of Missouri with degrees in finance and political science.

Nessa Feddis is Senior Vice President and Counsel of Regulatory Compliance and Policy for the

American Bankers Association (ABA), which is composed of small, regional, and large banks. She

represents ABA members in policy matters on a variety of consumer financial laws, including the Fair

Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and provides compliance assistance and training tools to member banks.

In addition, she focuses on fraud prevention and payment system issues.

Elisabeth Johnson‐Crawford is the Chief Technical Officer at Credit Builders Alliance (CBA) and for the

past 8 years has worked with the 537 CBA members who provide financial coaching and products to

low‐ and modest‐income consumers. These include 316 members accessing credit reports and over

200 data furnishers. She works with bureau contacts to coordinate regular reporting and identify

potential errors in processing, frequently works with members and their software vendors to

troubleshoot issues in generating credit reporting data, and researches and plans deployment for new

bureau services. She leads a team of bureau services specialists who serve the new and ongoing CBA

members and their bureau needs. Prior to working with CBA, she worked at American University for

the International Communication Program as an administrator, and she holds a Masters in

International Affairs from American’s School of International Service.

Panel 2: Current Accuracy Topics for Traditional Credit Reporting Agencies

Roberto (Bob) Cera is responsible for overseeing data furnisher contributions to the TransUnion (TU)

credit system. He joined TU in 2001 as a data analyst and has since held various operational, technical,

and leadership roles. He has recently driven internal operations’ processes and best practices

internationally and has supported the company’s alternative data initiatives and support. He continues

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to help educate customers and government offices on credit reporting practices. He is a member of

TU’s Data Governance council.

E. Michelle Drake is a Shareholder at Berger Montague PC, and runs the Firm’s Minneapolis office. She

focuses her practice on consumer protection, improper credit reporting, and financial services class

actions. She has served as lead class counsel on over fifty class and collective actions on behalf of

consumers across the nation. She also serves on the Board of the National Association of Consumer

Advocates, and the Board of Governors for the Minnesota Association of Justice, is a member of the

Partners’ Council of the National Consumer Law Center, and an At‐Large Council Member for the

Consumer Litigation Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association. She also is a frequent speaker, and

author, of continuing legal education seminars and materials related to her practice areas, and has

been recognized as a Super Lawyer for the last six years for her work.

Troy G. Kubes is Vice President and Deputy Chief Compliance Officer for Equifax Inc. He oversees a

team focused on compliance and risk mitigation across multiple business units. He joined Equifax in

2000 and spent most of his career within the Equifax Legal Department. His wide range of historical

responsibilities included providing counsel for regulatory and compliance efforts among Equifax’s

operations, technology, and data groups, along with the support of various regulatory initiatives.

Additionally, he oversaw support of Equifax’s direct‐to‐consumer business, vendor and sourcing

relationships, and the management of all domestic litigation. He has also supported multiple business

units including Telco, Insurance, Auto and Financial Institutions. He received his B.B.A., magna cum

laude, from Stetson University and J.D., with honors, from the University of Florida, where he served as

the Editor‐in‐Chief of the Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Ed Mierzwinski has worked in the Washington, DC‐based federal lobbying office of the Federation of

State Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG) since 1989. He often lectures or testifies before

Congress, state legislatures, and agencies on a wide range of consumer issues, including the FCRA, and

has been involved in all significant FCRA policy amendments since 1989. He has published reports on

numerous consumer issues, including the need for state consumer protection laws (anti‐preemption),

Big Data’s impact on financial opportunity, the CFPB Public Consumer Complaint Database, internet

privacy, identity theft, and credit reporting mistakes. He is a 2003 recipient of Privacy International’s

“Brandeis Award” for privacy protection efforts and a 2006 recipient of the Consumer Federation of

America’s “Esther Peterson Consumer Service Award.” He sits on several non‐profit boards, including

Consumer Reports (formerly Consumers Union), the world’s largest consumer product testing and

advocacy organization. He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut (BA, MS) and previously was

Executive Director of the Connecticut PIRG.

Donna Smith is responsible for data accuracy management, regulatory compliance, and consumer

advocacy for Consumer Information Services, Experian North America. She has held a wide variety of

leadership positions in finance, operations, marketing and program management at Experian over her

35‐year tenure. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce,

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an MBA from California State University, Fullerton and an MA in Psychology from Pepperdine

University. She has lead the creation of numerous data accuracy initiatives at Experian and is a

passionate advocate for both accuracy and fairness in credit reporting.

Michael Turner, Ph.D. is the founder, President and CEO of PERC. He is a prominent expert on credit

access, credit reporting and scoring, information policy, and economic development. He has advised

two Presidential administrations, testified before Congress and numerous state legislatures, and has

partnered with the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the Department of Housing and Urban

Development (HUD), and the White House (Council of Economic Advisors/National Economic Council).

Prior, he served as Graduate Fellow at the Columbia Institute of Tele‐Information at the Columbia

Business School in New York City, Executive Director of the Information Services Executive Council,

manager of government affairs for the North American Telecommunications Association and staff

assistant in the U.S. Senate.

Remarks

Brian Johnson is the CFPB’s Deputy Director. He first joined the Bureau in December 2017 as Senior

Advisor to the Director and was named Principal Policy Director in April 2018. He has served as Acting

Deputy Director since July 2018. He joined the Bureau from the House Financial Services Committee,

where he spent over five years serving in various capacities including Senior Counsel, Chief Financial

Institutions Counsel, and Policy Director. During his time on the Committee, he led the policy and

legislative work for the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee on issues related to

consumer protection and credit, mortgage origination, credit reporting, banking, and data security.

Prior to joining the Committee, he worked for the Attorney General of Ohio and the White House

Domestic Policy Council. He received his B.A. in economics, as well as his J.D., from the University of

Virginia.

Remarks

Andrew Stivers is Deputy Director in the Bureau of Economics at the FTC. He has previously served as

Acting Deputy of the Office of Analytics and Outreach, Director for Public Health Informatics and

Analytics, and Senior Economist at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the U.S. Food

and Drug Administration. He was also previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of

Economics at Oregon State University.

Panel 3: Accuracy Considerations for Background Screening

Terry W. Clemans has served since 2001 as the Executive Director of the National Consumer Reporting

Association, Inc. (NCRA), a Chicago based national trade association representing the housing credit

reporting industry. NCRA members account for 80% of the companies in the U.S. that produce credit

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reports required by HUD, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac for mortgage lending and many of the nation’s

leading resident screening firms. As executive director for NCRA he is an active advocate on consumer

reporting issues in Washington, DC as well as with many state and local fronts. He has been involved in

the consumer reporting industry since 1986, including the founding of American Credit Connection,

Inc. in 1991, a diversified consumer reporting agency providing mortgage, tenant, and employment

screening reports, which he grew from a three person startup to a twenty four employee company

when he sold it to a publicly traded competitor in 1998.

Eric Dunn joined the National Housing Law Project in 2018 after serving as a legal aid attorney for

sixteen years with the Legal Aid & Defender Association of Detroit (2001‐2005) and the Northwest

Justice Project (2005‐2016), and as a lobbyist and statewide housing advocate for the Virginia Poverty

Law Center (2016‐2018). He is probably best known for his work to improve administrative due process

available to subsidized housing tenants, and for his advocacy of rental housing admission issues. He is a

graduate of the University of Michigan (1997) and University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law

(2000).

Jamie Gullen is a supervising attorney in the Employment Unit and Youth Justice Project at Community

Legal Services (CLS). Her work focuses on increasing access to education and employment

opportunities for youth who have juvenile or criminal records through a combination of direct

representation, community education, and policy advocacy. She also leads CLS’s community‐based

record clearing programs and works to expand record clearing as a remedy in Pennsylvania and around

the country. She was part of the team that advocated for Pennsylvania’s first‐in‐the‐nation Clean Slate

law that seals old and minor criminal records through an automated process, and has been a leader in

implementing the law in Pennsylvania. She graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania

Law School in 2012, and has received several awards for her work, including the Penn Law Young

Alumni Award, the Sean Peretta Service Award from the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Young Lawyers

Division, and the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network’s Outstanding Leadership Award as part of a team

that advocated for Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate law.

Ariel Nelson is a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) focusing on credit and

background reporting and criminal justice debt issues. She is a contributing author to NCLC’s Fair Credit

Reporting. Previously, she litigated administrative and environmental law cases as a staff

attorney/clinical teaching fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. She also served as a law clerk

to the Honorable Judge David O. Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

and to the Honorable Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She

holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Melissa L. Sorenson serves as Executive Director for the Professional Background Screening

Association (PBSA) (formerly the National Association of Professional Background Screeners). Prior to

being retained by PBSA, she worked in the background screening industry in the compliance and legal

department at a consumer reporting agency. In her role as Executive Director, she is responsible for

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ensuring all contracted and volunteer services align with PBSA’s mission, vision, and strategic plan. She

holds a law degree from William Mitchell College of Law and is admitted to the Minnesota bar.

Matt Visser earned his undergraduate degree in Business from John Huntsman School of Business at

Utah State University and his MBA in Entrepreneurship from Westminster College in Salt Lake City,

Utah. He is a founder, Chief Executive Officer, and President of VICTIG Screening Solutions, where he

mentors and supports his employees. He is a contributor to groups like the Center for American

Progress, Cornell University, Rutgers University, Juvenile Law Center, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil

Rights, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the W. K. Kellogg

Foundation, New York Civil Rights Commission, and the Power User Group with Tazworks. He is a

member of Concerned CRAs and has both a basic and advanced FCRA certification through the

Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA). VICTIG is also an accredited member of the

PBSA.

Panel 4: Navigating the Dispute Process

LaDonna Bohling is the Chief Compliance Officer with Receivable Solutions, Inc. She has over 20 years

of Operational and Compliance experience in third party debt collections experienced in all verticals

serving creditors and debt buyers. She is a certified instructor for ACA International and was named

one of the 25 most influential women in Collections by Collection Advisor in 2016, Who’s Who in

Compliance in 2018, and ACA International Certified Instructor of the Year 2019.

Eric J. Ellman joined the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA) in 1998 and for over two decades,

he has developed a strong base of knowledge of consumer reporting in the overall consumer reporting

ecosystem. He has testified before legislative and regulatory bodies over 100 times, and he has

appeared in many nationally‐recognized print, radio, television, and electronic media outlets. He

advances CDIA’s vision to empower economic opportunity for consumers across the U.S. to help them

meet their financial needs. He is a native New Yorker who went to undergrad at American University

and to law school at the University of Baltimore. Eric also spent four terms as a member of his town

council in Maryland.

Stephanie Froelich is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of True Hire, LLC, a company that

specializes in providing background checks, tenant screening, exit interviewing, drug testing, and other

human resource services to businesses nationwide. True Hire has gone through the rigorous

certification with the Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA), and, as such, the company

adheres to the high level of ethics and performance standards for the screening industry. With over 22

years of experience in the background check screening business, she has the resources and knowledge

large companies need when hiring thousands of employees annually. As an active member of the

Society for Human Resource Management and PBSA, she is knowledgeable of industry trends and FCRA

compliance procedures.

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Kristi C. Kelly specializes in assisting consumers with credit reporting and employment background

check mistakes, mortgage servicing errors, and abusive debt collection practices. She has successfully

litigated hundreds of individual and class action cases against banks, brokers, auto dealers, online

lenders, debt collectors, credit card companies, credit bureaus, and foreclosure rescue scammers,

receiving a $686,000 jury verdict in addition to her attorneys’ fees in her first jury trial. Kristi is a

regular speaker on credit reporting and mortgage servicing issues for the National Consumer Law

Center (NCLC), the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the Virginia Continuing Legal

Education program, and various legal aid organizations throughout the country. She serves on the

Board of Directors for the Legal Aid Justice Center and National Association of Consumer Advocates.

She is also on the Partner’s Council of NCLC. She was previously a shareholder at Surovell Isaacs

Petersen & Levy and a housing and consumer law attorney for Legal Services of Northern Virginia.

Rebecca Kuehn is a partner in Hudson Cook, LLP’s Washington, D.C. office, where she chairs the Credit

Reporting, Privacy, and Data Security Practice Group. Her practice is concentrated on regulatory issues

surrounding the collection, sharing, and use of consumer data, and she counsels financial institutions,

consumer reporting agencies, service providers, and others in complying with federal and state laws,

including the FCRA, the Gramm‐Leach Bliley Act, and other privacy laws and regulations. She previously

was an assistant director at the FTC, where she led the FCRA program.

Chi Chi Wu has been a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) for over a decade.

She focuses on consumer credit issues at NCLC, including legislative, administrative, and other

advocacy. Her specialties include fair credit reporting, credit cards, refund anticipation loans, and

medical debt. Before joining NCLC, she worked in the Consumer Protection Division at the

Massachusetts Attorney General’s office and the Asian Outreach Unit of Greater Boston Legal Services.

She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and The Johns Hopkins University. She is co‐author of the legal

manuals Fair Credit Reporting Act and Collection Actions, and a contributing author to Consumer Credit

Regulation and Truth in Lending.

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