Alexander Meeks is a director at Milken Institute Finance. Meeks focuses on helping communities decarbonize buildings, deploy renewable energy infrastructure, and accelerate resilient disaster recovery and adaptation to extreme weather events. In doing so, he leverages the Institute’s Community Infrastructure Center, a platform connecting over 3,000 organizations to data, resources, and capital to advance critical infrastructure projects across the country. Under the banner of the Community Infrastructure Center, he oversees Deal Rooms that have featured nearly $2B in climate and housing projects seeking mission-driven investment. He is also central to the Institute’s response to the Eaton and Palisades fires of January 2025, leading convenings and research on ways to fund and finance disaster recovery and long-term resilience in the wake of the wildfires.
 
Prior to his work at the Milken Institute, Meeks served as a Principal at HR&A Advisors, a consulting firm that specializes in economic development, real estate, and urban planning and policy advisory services. At HR&A, he advised on environmentally sustainable economic and community development planning; building weatherization and decarbonization policy and program design; and hazard mitigation costs, benefits, and funding strategies in cities across the United States and internationally. Prior to HR&A, Meeks managed federally funded housing, small business, and infrastructure recovery and resilience projects in New York State after Superstorm Sandy.
 
Meeks holds a master’s in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a sustainability certificate from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute’s New York Chapter.

Dr. Kalotay is an authority on quantitative analysis of municipal bonds, including risk management, debt management, and tax management. He has been a prolific contributor to both academic and practitioner literature. His book, “The Interest Rate Risk Management of Municipal Bonds’, was published in 2021, and his ‘tax-neutral OAS’ method of valuing municipal bonds received a patent in 2024.

In 2021 he sold his firm Andrew Kalotay Associates, which he founded in 1990, to the Intercontinental Exchange. His firm provided bond analytics to some of the most sophisticated market participants. Previously, he was with Salomon Brothers and Dillon Read. Prior to Wall Street, he was at Bell Telephone Laboratories and AT&T.

On the academic side, he directed the first graduate Financial Engineering program in the U.S. at Polytechnic University (now part of New York University), from 1994 to 1997. Previously he taught at Wharton, Columbia, and Fordham University.

He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Queen’s University and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, all in mathematics. He was inducted into the Fixed Income Analyst Society’s “Hall of Fame” in 1997.

Ambassador Eleni Kounalakis is the 50th Lieutenant Governor of California and the first woman elected to the office. From 2010 to 2013, Kounalakis served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Hungary and in 2015 published her acclaimed memoir, “Madam Ambassador, Three Years of Diplomacy, Dinner Parties and Democracy in Budapest”. Prior to her service, Kounalakis spent 18 years as an executive at one of California’s most respected housing development firms, AKT Development. Throughout her career, she served on numerous boards and commissions including California’s First 5 Commission, the San Francisco War Memorial, San Francisco Port Commission, and the Association of American Ambassadors. Eleni Kounalakis graduated from Dartmouth College in 1989 and earned an MBA from U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 1992. She holds Honorary Doctorates of Laws from the American College of Greece and the University of Piraeus and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is married to Dr. Markos Kounalakis and the couple has two sons, Neo and Eon. 

Mark T. Kim is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), the principal regulator of the $4 trillion municipal securities market. Before becoming CEO, Mark was the Chief Operating Officer from 2017-2020 and served on the MSRB Board of Directors from 2015-2017. Prior to the MSRB, Mark was Chief Financial Officer for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water). Under his direction, DC Water won multiple Deal of the Year awards for its creative and innovative bond financing program. Previously, Mark served as Assistant Comptroller for Public Finance and then Deputy Comptroller for Economic Development for the City of New York. Prior to his public service, Mark was an investment banker at several financial services firms including UBS and Goldman Sachs. Mark holds a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University, a law degree from Cornell Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.

Leslie M. Norwood is Managing Director and Associate General Counsel of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). She has served SIFMA and its predecessor organizations since 2004. Ms. Norwood is responsible for the legal, regulatory and market practice initiatives of the Association relating to all municipal securities products. Prior to joining SIFMA, Ms. Norwood was an Associate in the Corporate and Securities department at Greenberg Traurig. She also spent 6 years as an Associate in the Public Finance department of Sidley Austin LLP (formerly known as Brown & Wood LLP) where she represented bond issuers, borrowers and underwriters in fixed and variable rate transactions; general obligation, subject to appropriation and revenue bond (public power, education, health care and cultural institutions) transactions; and transactions with credit enhancement. Ms. Norwood received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and her J.D. from Boston University School of Law. She is a member of the New York, New Jersey and California Bars.

Dave is the Director of the Office of Municipal Securities at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He has almost 30 years of experience in all aspects of the municipal finance market. In prior service at the SEC, he was a principal drafter of both the final Municipal Advisor rule and the 2012 Commission Report on the State of the Municipal Securities Market. Dave previously served as General Counsel to the investment bank De La Rosa & Co. Inc. and as a Deputy City Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco and for over 15 years as bond and disclosure counsel to governmental entities throughout the country.

Dave was also formerly Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown Law Center, where he taught “The Securities Law of Public Finance.” Dave earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in Social Psychology from the University of New Mexico.

Nikolai J. Sklaroff serves as Capital Finance Director of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC). He is also a Commissioner on the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission (CDIAC) and he is member of the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Debt Committee.

As the SFPUC’s Capital Finance Director, he is responsible for developing, implementing and administering the SFPUC Capital Financing activities across the agency which is comprised of Water, Wastewater and Power enterprises. He leads a team of professionals supporting the agency’s capital project funding activities for four highly rated entities. The Capital Finance Director manages the day-to-day operations of the SFPUC’s capital finance portfolio which includes more than $11 billion of outstanding debt (including revenue bonds and state and federal loans) and the daily operations of the SFPUC’s three Commercial Paper Programs with total authorization of more than $2 billion.

Nikolai was appointed as a state Commissioner to the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission (CDIAC) by California State Treasurer Fiona Ma in December 2022. CDIAC was created by the California Legislature to assist state and local agencies with the issuance, monitoring, and management of public debt and the investment of public funds through its research and technical assistance programs and acts as the State’s clearinghouse for public debt issuance information. Commission members include the State Treasurer, Governor, State Controller, two Assembly members, two State Senators, a County representative and Nikolai representing California’s cities.

Nikolai has spent more than three decades in the public finance industry and most recently served as the Deputy Director of Finance responsible for the Debt & Treasury Management division in the City of San José. In that role he oversaw teams managing the City’s debt portfolio across all enterprises, management of the City’s investment portfolio and the City’s banking operations. Nikolai spent 22 years as a senior public finance investment banker in San Francisco with Citigroup Global Markets, J. P. Morgan Securities – as national Head of Cultural Institutions investment banking – and Wells Fargo Securities. Prior to becoming an investment banker, Nikolai was a senior Moody’s Investors Service rating agency analyst and member of Moody’s rating committee. Nikolai began his career as a financial advisor with Public Financial Management, Inc. in his hometown of Philadelphia, where he received his degrees from the Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania, prior to moving to England (to live in a castle) to pursue his graduate degree. He pursued further graduate studies at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs prior to being relocated to San Francisco by Moody’s.

A frequent speaker at industry conferences and author on public finance topics, Nikolai has also served on multiple boards of directors and advisory committees including the Western Museums Association and the Association for Governmental Leasing and Finance (AGL&F)

Gabriel Petek was appointed to the position of the Legislative Analyst in February 2019, as the sixth person to serve in that capacity since the office was founded in 1941. As the Legislative Analyst, Gabriel serves as the nonpartisan fiscal advisor to both houses of the California Legislature and oversees the preparation of fiscal and policy analyses of the state’s budget and programs. His office is also responsible for preparing impartial analyses of all initiatives and constitutional measures qualifying for the state’s ballot. Before joining the office, Gabriel worked for two decades at S&P Global Ratings. Gabriel held several positions at S&P before he was ultimately named the Managing Director and Sector Leader in the U.S. States Group of the U.S. Public Finance Division in San Francisco. Gabriel was S&P’s primary analyst for the states of California and Illinois. Gabriel graduated with a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, during which time he interned at the City of Boston’s Office of Management and Budget. In addition, he earned his B.A., magna cum laude, in political science from Loyola Marymount University, with a portion of his undergraduate coursework completed through his participation in the Hansard Scholars Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gabriel holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and has served as an advisor to the Government Finance Officer’s Association’s Committee on Governmental Budgeting and Fiscal Policy. He currently serves on the Statewide Leadership Council of the Public Policy Institute of California. Gabriel is married to Andrea de la Fuente and has two children, Eden and William.