XBRL

As Senior Director of Interactive Services for Bowne & Co., Inc., Rob defines the strategic direction and solution offerings for regulatory interactive data initiatives focused on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and XBRL(r) (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). Rob leverages more than 16 years of experience in business reporting and technology to lead Bowne's XBRL media outreach activities and involvement with XBRL International. Prior to joining Bowne, Rob was Project Director for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) US GAAP Financial Statement Taxonomy Project, where he led a virtual team of over 25 companies and 70 people creating the new XBRL taxonomies for use by U.S. public companies. Rob previously helped launch Rivet Software, a Denver, CO-based provider of interactive software applications built on XBRL and served for 9 years with Microsoft and subsidiaries in a variety of roles including XBRL Global Lead and Director of Product Strategies. Rob is also a founding member of XBRL International, the industry consortium formed in 1999 to develop and maintain XBRL that now includes over 600 organizations.

David Blaszkowsky is the first Director of the Office of Interactive Disclosure at the Securities and Exchange Commission, named to the position by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox in October 2007. In the position, Blaszkowsky will be reponsible for leading the SEC's transformation to interactive financial reporting by public companies. Specifically, he will coordinate the agency-wide disclosure modernization program, and will work with investor groups, analysts, journalists, and preparers of financial statements as well as other key public and private sector stakeholders in the United States and around the world to advance the use of interactive data in financial reporting. Prior to joining the SEC, Blaszkowsky spent 11 years at McGraw-Hill, including seven years with the firm’s Standard & Poor’s division. At S&P, he served as Director of Global Market Development for Institutional Market Services, and as Senior Director in Equity Research Services, where he led S&P’s Corporate Markets and Investor Relations Services businesses. 

Previously, Blaszkowsky was Manager of Finance and Planning for Fidelity Investments, and was a Senior Business Analyst for McKinsey & Company. He also served as a senior consultant and manager for the Price Waterhouse Strategic Consulting Group and Gemini Consulting. 

Blaszkowsky holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. He is a member of the National Investor Relations Institute and the Canadian Investor Relations Institute, and has presented to professional organizations and government regulators on many occasions in the U.S. and overseas.

Kurt Ramin is based at the International Accounting Committee Foundation (IASCF) and International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in London. Consulting responsibilities include improving electronic services related to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and assisting the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) with the outreach to countries adopting IFRS. 

Before being seconded by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to London he was a Partner in PwC’s New York office working in their Capital Markets Practice. Prior to that, he served as Chief Financial Officer to several different companies in the USA and Germany. 

Kurt Ramin holds an MBA from Central Michigan University and a BA from Fachhochschule, Cologne, Germany. He is a CPA (New York) and a Certified Employee Benefits Specialist (CEBS) through Wharton School, Philadelphia. He is a member of the Financial Executives International (FEI) and their Globalization Oversight Committee (GOC). 

Kurt Ramin was a member of the High Level Expert Group of the EU on “The Intangible Economy” (with Leif Edvinsson, Baruch Lev and others). 

He has published articles on International Financial Reporting, XBRL and Capital Markets issues in International Handbooks and Magazines, such as (both with Carol Frost) “International Auditing Differences”, in: Journal of Accountancy, “Corporate Financial Disclosure”, in: Choi, International Accounting and Finance Handbook and “International Corporate Practice”, Practicing Law Institute, New York, 2007.

Mike Willis has more than 26 years of accounting and auditing experience and is a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mike served as the Founding Chairman of XBRL International (https://www.xbrl.org), which is currently composed of more than 600 leading software, accounting and finance companies from 27 countries around the world. Mike has served in a number of roles within the XBRL community and currently serves on the International Steering Committee as Vice-Chairman. XBRL is an international information format standard designed to dramatically enhance business reporting supply chain processes benefiting preparers, distributors, aggregators and consumers of this information. He speaks frequently, publishes papers and blogs on the topic of business reporting. Mike has been interviewed for or published articles in a range of business periodicals on the topic of a more efficient business reporting supply chain including the Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Business Week, Wall Street & Technology, CFO Magazine, and CIO Magazine.