PEOPLE:
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Kenn Beam Tacchino, JD, LLM
Co-Director of the New York Life Center for Retirement Income
The New York Life Center for Retirement Income is led by Kenn Beam Tacchino, JD, LLM. Mr. Tacchino spearheads the creation of an annual guide for retirement planners and oversees the content of this website. In addition to his duties at The American College, Professor Tacchino is also the head of the Economics, Finance, and Tax Department at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. Kenn is also the editor of the Journal of Financial Service Professionals .
Professor Tacchino is the co-author of Financial Decisions for Retirement and Planning for Retirement Needs. Both books have been in publication since 1987. He has written numerous scholarly articles on retirement and pension topics. Professor Tacchino has won multiple awards for both his teaching and his scholarly writing. Among other consulting activities, he conducts retirement planning seminars for employee groups.
David A. Littell, JD, ChFC®, CFP®
Co-Director of the New York Life Center Joseph E. Boettner Chair in Research Professor of Taxation
In this position, he is responsible for course and textbook development for HS 326 Planning for Retirement Needs and HS 352 Financial Decisions for Retirement. He is also responsible for the HS 350 course, Understanding the Older Client, and serves as the coordinator for the CASL ® program.
He speaks regularly to financial advisors and benefits professionals on pensions retirement planning and working with older clients. Active in the field of adult education, Professor Littell has been an instructor at the Philadelphia Institute, teaching various employee benefit topics and legal research, and has taught courses that are part of the Certified Employee Benefits Specialist program.
Professor Littell has also co-authored several books associated with American College courses: Planning for Retirement Needs, Financial Decision Making at Retirement, and The Practitioner's Guide to Advanced Pension Topics. He has published numerous articles for such periodicals as the Journal of Financial Service Professionals , FOCUS , Compensation and Benefits Management , and Benefits Quarterly . In 1997, Professor Littell won an Article Award from the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. He also has served on several CFP ® item writing committee groups for the CFP Board of Examiners.
A native of Chicago, Professor Littell holds a BA degree in psychology from Northwestern University and earned his JD at the Boston University School of Law. Professor Littell, who resides in Ardmore, PA, is also actively involved in the sport of fencing. He was a member of the 1988 U.S. Olympic Fencing Team and was a fencing coach at Haverford College from 1999 to 2006.
ABOUT THE ADVISORY BOARD
Rebekah Barsch
Vice President of Market Strategy and Training, Northwestern Mutual
Rebekah Barsch currently serves as vice president of market strategy and training. In this role, she is responsible for leading the development of Northwestern Mutual’s strategies for key market segments, including overseeing the launch of the company’s retirement strategy, an enterprise wide planning approach to delivering financial security for clients throughout their retirement years. Her team also leads the integration of planning and product training for Northwestern Mutual’s sales force.
Barsch previously served as director-strategic planning and consulting, vice president-wealth management, vice president-investment products, director of the annuity product line, and as Northwestern Mutual’s relationship manager for the Russell Investment Group.
She joined Northwestern Mutual in 1994 as a specialist in the Communications Department and also ran the Northwestern Mutual Foundation.
Barsch holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Ross Goldstein
Ross Goldstein is a Corporate Vice President in the Investment Group of New York Life Insurance Company where he is responsible for all of the Company’s annuity marketing efforts.
Previously, Ross was the Corporate Vice President of Branding and Advertising in Corporate Communications where he was responsible for brand strategy and advertising creative. Ross joined New York Life in 2000, as part of the Company’s Management Associates program. He holds an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business and a B.S. in Economics from Cornell University.
Ross resides in New York City with his wife Beth.
John Ameriks, Ph.D.
John Ameriks, Ph.D., is a Vanguard principal and head of Vanguard's Investment Counseling & Research Group. He serves as one of Vanguard's experts on retirement advice, retirement income management, and other investment issues. Dr. Ameriks' works examining individual and household financial decisions regarding saving and portfolio allocation have been published in articles in the American Economic Review , the Quarterly Journal of Economics , the Review of Economics and Statistics , and the Journal of Financial Planning . He is co-editor with Olivia Mitchell of the Wharton School of Recalibrating Retirement Spending and Saving (Oxford University Press). His current research interests include target date funds, managed payout funds, income generating strategies for retirees, and the financial behavior and decisions of individual investors. Before joining Vanguard in 2003, Dr. Ameriks was a senior research fellow at the TIAA-CREF Institute. He received an A.B. from Stanford University and the Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.
Allen McLellan, LUTCF, CLU®, ChFC®, CASL®, CFP®
Associate Dean Assistant Professor of Insurance
Allen is Associate Dean and an Assistant Professor of Insurance at The American College. He is a 1971 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and holds a master's degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology. Allen taught mathematics at the Air Force Academy from 1979 to 1983. He is a graduate of the Air Forces three officer professional educational institutions: Squadron Officer School, the Air Command and Staff College, and the Air War College.
After more than 21 years as an Air Force officer, Allen entered the financial services industry as an insurance and investments field representative. He holds designations of LUTC Fellow, Chartered Life Underwriter® (CLU®), Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC®), and Chartered Advisor for Senior Living®(CASL®) from The American College, and is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERTM (CFP®) designee. As a financial planner, Allen focused his practice around the needs of senior clients such as income distribution, health, housing, Medicare, Medicaid, long-term care, and end-of-life challenges. In 1999, Allen was named the "Underwriter of the Year" by the Montgomery (AL) Association of Life Underwriters.
He has been married over 36 years to Faye, and they are the parents of two daughters, Marta and Tara. In spare moments, Allen enjoys reading, music jams, and song writing.
Heide Sacher
Heide Sacher is Corporate Vice President of Marketing Strategy for the Guaranteed Lifetime Income Division at New York Life, the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States and one of the largest life insurers in the world.
Heide is responsible for spearheading the development and growth of the strategic marketing and competitive intelligence program for the Guaranteed Lifetime Income division of New York Life, including marketing collateral development, direct mail, email marketing, market research and online marketing. She also oversees New York Life's sponsorship of the Retirement Income Center at The American College.
Heide earned her bachelor's degree from Rutger's University in 1990. She joined New York Life in 2007, and has held positions of increasing responsibility in marketing and communications in multiple firms over the past 17 years, leading up to her current role. Active in the industry, Heide is a member of the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE), the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW) and the Association for National Advertisers (ANA).
Heide resides in Florham Park, New Jersey, with her husband and their three sons
R. Morris Sims, MSM, CLU®, ChFC®
Vice President and Chief Learning Officer, Agency
After 5 years practicing Chemical Engineering, Morris began his career with New York Life in May of 1984 as an agent in New Orleans, LA. After achieving council level production for two years he was appointed Training Supervisor in Monroe, LA and fell in love with helping people improve their performance.
After Monroe, Morris moved to the Arkansas General Office, then to Dallas as Zone Training Officer, and then to the Home Office where he was initially in charge of Management Training. Since then he has been responsible for many aspects of training over the years. Currently Morris has responsibility for all aspects of agent training, sales systems, Development Managers, Zone Training Officers, and Industry Relations. In 2007 he was named the Chief Learning Officer for the Agency Department.
Morris is a graduate of Auburn University and The American College.
Mark J. Warshawsky
Director of Retirement Research
Mark J. Warshawsky is Director of Retirement Research at Towers Watson, a global human capital consulting firm. He conducts and oversees research on employer-sponsored retirement programs and policies, social security, financial planning and health care financing. He has written numerous articles published in leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals, practitioner publications, conference volumes and working papers, has organized several research conferences, and has testified before Congress on public policies relating to pensions, annuities and other economic issues. He is a co-author of the Fundamentals of Private Pensions, Ninth Edition, 2009, published by Oxford University Press, and of Retirement Income: Risks and Strategies, forthcoming, MIT Press.
A member of the Social Security Advisory Board for a term through 2012, he is also on the Advisory Board of the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School.
From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Warshawsky served as assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury Department. There he played a key role in the development of the Administration’s pension reform proposals, particularly pertaining to the funding of single-employer defined benefit plans, which formed the basis of the Pension Protection Act of 2006. Dr. Warshawsky’s research led directly to the 2001-2 regulatory reform of minimum distribution requirements for qualified retirement plans. He is the inventor of the life care annuity, a product innovation integrating the immediate life annuity and long-term care insurance. For that research, Dr. Warshawsky won a prize from the British Institute of Actuaries in 2001. He has also held senior-level economic research positions at the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. and TIAA-CREF, where he established the Paul A. Samuelson Prize. Dr. Warshawsky received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and a B.A. with Highest Distinction from Northwestern University.
Walt Woerheide, PhD, CFP®
VP of Academic Affairs and Dean Frank M. Engle Distinguished Chair in Economic Security Research Professor of Investments
Before joining the College in 2001, Dr. Woerheide held appointments as a professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Chicago for 10 years, the Univ. of Michigan - Flint for 6 years, and Rochester Institute of Technology for 11 years. He also worked for a year as a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.
Dr. Woerheide has served as President of the Academy of Financial Services, an association of people interested in teaching and research in the area of financial planning, and as President of the Midwest Finance Association. He has been Judge for the Financial Frontiers Awards, a Judge for the Kenneth Black, Jr., Journal Author Award Program given by the Journal of Financial Service Professionals. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Financial Service Professionals and serves on the Editorial Board of the Financial Services Review and Business Quest and the Journal of Financial Planning .
In addition to co-authoring the three most recent editions of The College's Investments textbook, he has also published Introducing Personal Finance with John Wiley & Sons, and The Savings and Loan Industry: Current Problems and Possible Solutions with Quorum Books . Dr. Woerheide has published over 26 articles in various journals including Journal of Financial Service Professionals , Financial Services Review , Financial Counseling and Planning , Journal of Financial Planning, and Journal of Consumer Affairs . He has refereed articles for 16 different journals, served on multiple program committees for professional associations, reviewed numerous textbooks, and serves as an outside referee for promotion and tenure cases.
Dr. Woerheide earned his PhD and MBA degrees from Washington University, and he has a BA from Brown University.
