CoBank presents its 2018 Southeast Customer Meeting

An Outstanding Program

CoBank’s 2018 Southeast Customer Meeting will feature presentations from leading experts on the economy, the mid-term elections and political environment, business leadership, and other important topics and trends. Our program is designed to provide directors and managers valuable knowledge, insight and information they can use every day in both their business and personal lives.

Speakers

Tom Halverson ~ President and Chief Executive Officer, CoBank
Charlie Cook ~ Editor and Publisher, The Cook Political Report
Susan O'Malley ~ Former President, Washington Sports and Entertainment
Amy Purdy ~ 2014 Paralympic Bronze Medalist in Snowboarding and “Dancing With the Stars” Contestant
Marci Rossell ~ Economist

Who will benefit

We welcome managers and directors of all CoBank customer and partner organizations, including:

• Agricultural cooperatives and other agribusiness enterprises
• Rural electric cooperatives
• Rural water companies
• Rural communications service providers
• Farm Credit System banks and associations

Additional Information

Please click on the registration tab to access our online registration site. There is no charge to attend the conference beyond your travel and hotel expenses. Please review this section carefully in regard to the registration and cancellation policies.

Be sure to make your hotel reservation as soon as possible to ensure availability. Please click on the hotel tab for additional information on making your hotel reservation. Please also review this section carefully for hotel reservation and cancellation policies.

For further information, contact CoBank’s Corporate Communications Division at 303-740-6442 or by email at corp.comm@cobank.com. 

Dress code for this meeting is business casual. You may wish to wear a jacket for dinner, but ties are not required.

Speakers

Our speaker program is designed to provide managers and directors from CoBank’s customer organizations with valuable insight and information they can use in their business and personal lives. Bios of speakers for the 2018 Southeast Customer Meeting are listed below. Following the meeting, the speaker presentations that we have permission to distribute will also be available on this page.

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Tom Halverson

President and Chief Executive Officer, CoBank

As CoBank’s president and chief executive officer, Thomas Halverson is responsible for implementing the bank’s strategic and business direction as set by the Board of Directors. Previously, he served as CoBank’s chief banking officer where he was responsible for the bank’s Agribusiness and Rural Infrastructure banking groups as well the Banking Services group and Corporate Communications. Mr. Halverson is the chairman of CoBank’s Management Executive Committee and serves as chairman and director of Farm Credit Leasing.

Prior to joining CoBank in 2013, Mr. Halverson spent more than 15 years with Goldman Sachs. He was most recently managing director and chief of staff for Goldman Sachs Bank USA, a $120 billion commercial bank subsidiary of the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Prior to that he served in a variety of executive positions at the firm, including head of credit risk management for Goldman Sachs in Asia (ex-Japan) and executive director of credit risk management and advisory in London. Before joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Halverson served as principal credit officer for country risk at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London.

Mr. Halverson earned a British Marshall Scholarship and completed a doctorate in war studies at King’s College, University of London and is a summa cum laude graduate of Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

 

Charlie Cook

Editor and Publisher, The Cook Political Report

For more than three decades, Charlie Cook has served as one of the nation’s most trusted and accurate political analysts. As publisher of The Cook Political Report, he provides election analyses and polling data on presidential, congressional and gubernatorial races.

The New York Times has called The Cook Political Report “a newsletter that both parties regard as authoritative,” and Bob Schieffer of CBS News calls it “the bible of the political community.” Mr. Cook is one of the most called-upon sources in the nation for those who want to know what is happening behind the scenes in American politics.

Mr. Cook is also a political analyst for the National Journal Group. He has served as a political analyst for NBC News, and his balanced, nonpartisan insights also have been featured on ABC, CBS, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN and National Public Radio.

Susan O'Malley

Former President, Washington Sports and Entertainment

Susan O’Malley became the first female president of a professional sports franchise when she took the helm of Washington Sports and Entertainment, which runs the NBA’s Washington Bullets (now Wizards), in 1991. During her tenure, her ground-breaking business ideas and proactive approach to customer service brought her – and WSE – to the top of the sports business world.

Under Ms. O’Malley’s guidance, the company improved both its bottom line and its winning percentage. In her first season handling off-court activities, the team experienced the largest ticket revenue increase in the history of an NBA franchise. The 2005–2006 Wizards season saw the franchise tally 14 sellouts, averaging over 17,000 fans per game en route to their second consecutive trip to the NBA playoffs. Her accomplishments also include innovative marketing and customer service initiatives that are still in use today.

After leaving Washington Sports and Entertainment, Ms. O’Malley earned her law degree from Georgetown University, where she also taught a sports business marketing class and was awarded the Adjunct Professor of the Year Award. She served as St. Joseph’s University’s first sports marketing professor and is currently a full-time faculty member at the University of South Carolina. She is also a consultant with the Sports and Entertainment Company (Sports-EntCo).

Amy Purdy

2014 Paralympic Bronze Medalist in Snowboarding and “Dancing With the Stars” Contestant

Despite losing her legs to bacterial meningitis when she was only 19, Amy Purdy has become the top-ranked adaptive snowboarder in the U.S., a three-time World Cup Para-Snowboard winner, the 2014 Paralympic bronze medalist, and the author of New York Times best-seller On My Own Two Feet.

After going through her life-altering experience, Ms. Purdy was unable to find prosthetics that would allow her to snowboard, so she built her own. She began snowboarding just seven months after receiving her leg prosthetics. Three months after a kidney transplant, she entered the USASA National Snowboarding Championship, where she won medals in three events. She is the only double-leg amputee competing at the elite world-class level.

Ms. Purdy was the first double amputee contestant on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, where she finished second and joined the short list of contestants to never receive any score lower than an 8. She and longtime boyfriend Daniel Gale also raced around the world on CBS’s The Amazing Race, and she was featured in a national Super Bowl ad for Toyota in 2015, as well as countless magazines including the 2014 ESPN Body Issue and People magazine.

In 2005, Ms. Purdy co-founded Adaptive Action Sports, a nonprofit dedicated to introducing people with physical challenges to action sports. AAS was instrumental in getting adaptive snowboarding added to the 2014 Paralympic Games.

Marci Rossell

Economist

Economist Marci Rossell has a unique ability to take complex financial issues and make them relevant to people’s lives, families and careers.

Now the chief economist for Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, Ms. Rossell is best known for the time she spent in broadcast television as chief economist for CNBC. She has also served as a corporate economist and investment spokesperson for Oppenheimer Funds, one of the nation’s largest mutual fund companies. She began her career as an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Ms. Rossell earned a doctorate in economics from Southern Methodist University, where she was also named Young Alumni of the Year in 2002.

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Registration

Please register as soon as possible for the 2018 Southeast Customer Meeting. There is no charge to attend CoBank’s meeting or meals beyond your travel and hotel expenses. To register, please use this link to our Online Registration Form. Simply fill in the requested personal information and complete the agenda page by selecting the events in which you plan to participate.

If you are registering on behalf of another individual, please make sure to use their email address when completing the form so that their registration information will be unique. Only one registrant per unique email address will be allowed. There will be an opportunity for you to add your information in as well so that you will receive copies of the confirmation details.

Registration Policy

Each attendee is welcome to register one spouse or adult guest to attend the meal functions of the meeting, including the welcome dinner with guest speaker, Amy Purdy. To make this process easier, you can add your guest as part of your registration by simply clicking on the box that says, “I plan to bring a guest” and then provide his/her personal information as requested. Please be sure to correctly indicate the number of attendees for each meal function with the drop-down choices.

Please note that due to space constraints, only one adult guest per invited attendee can be included and pre-registration is required. Thank you for your consideration so that we may accommodate all our customers who would like to attend.

If you are registering more than one person from your organization, click on “Add Another Person” and complete their information and agenda as well.

Once you have completed the information for all registrants, be sure to click on “Finish my Registration” in order to finalize your attendance at the meeting. Once you have completed this process, you will receive a confirmation email. If you do not receive a confirmation email, your registration is incomplete. Please contact CoBank’s Corporate Communications Department at 303-740-6442 or by email at corp.comm@cobank.com for assistance.

Cancellation Policy

If you / your guest are unable to attend the meeting, it is required that you cancel your online registration a minimum of 3 business days prior to the start date of the meeting. To cancel, use the link in your email registration confirmation to change or cancel your registration record. Or you can simply send notice of cancellation to corp.comm@cobank.com. Thank you for your courtesy in this regard as late cancellations and no-shows represent a significant cost to CoBank.

Hotel

Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island
4750 Amelia Island Parkway
Amelia Island, Florida 32034
904-530-0928

CoBank respectfully requests that you be considerate of all our customers when reserving hotel rooms at our conference hotels. Please make reservations only for confirmed, registered meeting attendees rather than reserving a large block of rooms for potential attendees. While we understand that you want to ensure space for your board and management teams, this practice creates artificial sell-out situations and prevents other customers from staying at the conference hotel. Additionally, please cancel rooms you will not use as soon as possible to make space for others who are on a waiting list to get in.

The Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island is located at 4750 Amelia Island Parkway, Amelia Island, FL 32034. To make your hotel reservation online, please use this link to the hotel's reservation system. Or, if you prefer, call the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island at 888-239-1217. Mention your CoBank affiliation to receive the preferred room rate of $289. The number of rooms available at this rate is limited, so please make your reservation as soon as possible. For each reservation, a deposit of one night’s room and tax will be required. After the reservation deadline of March 2, 2018, the group rate will no longer be available. For more information, please click here to visit the hotel website.

Check in time is 4:00 p.m. / Check out time is 11:00 a.m.

Please note: If you need to cancel your reservation at the the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island, please do so 7 days prior to arrival date to avoid cancellation charges.

Attendee List

Please click on this link for a downloadable list of registered attendees for the meeting.