Keynote Speakers

John Amatt
Mt. Everest Expedition Leader & Author

John Amatt is Founder & President of One Step Beyond WorldWide, an innovative educational and motivational company, whose mission is to encourage people to push beyond their self-imposed limitations, to be more personally accountable for the results of their own actions, and to embrace effective teamwork by valuing the contribution of others. In this capacity, he has delivered more than 1,800 presentations and seminars in 48 countries and has been called “The World’s Best Adventure Speaker”.

A native of Great Britain, for the past 35 years he has been a resident of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and is the Founder of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, widely recognized as the world’s premiere showcase of adventure documentary films.

John is renowned in the international mountaineering community for making the first ever climb of Europe's highest and steepest mountain face - the 5000 foot "Vertical Mile" Troll Wall in Norway. He was leader of an early climbing expedition to Western China, which used camels to approach a 25,000-foot mountain before skiing to the summit, this being perhaps the highest peak in the world to have been ascended and descended entirely on skis. And more recently, he was the principal organizer and a leader of Canada's first successful expedition to reach the top of the world - the 29,035 foot summit of Mount Everest – a climb that was televised live throughout Canada and on ABC Nightline in the United States.

John’s adventures are related in his autobiography, Straight to the Top and Beyond, in which he uses the metaphor of his own adventures to develop a nine-step approach for scaling the heights in today’s unpredictable global business environments.

Doug Duncan
Vice President and Chief Economist, Fannie Mae

Douglas G. Duncan is Fannie Mae's vice president and chief economist. He is responsible for managing Fannie Mae's Economics & Mortgage Market Analysis Group. In this leadership role, Duncan provides all economic, housing, and mortgage market forecasts and analyses and serves as the company's thought leader internally and with external constituent groups. Reporting directly to the senior vice president of Business Strategy, Duncan is an important source of information and commentary on the external business and economic environment, and is a leading voice on the economy, housing, and mortgage markets.

Prior to joining Fannie Mae, Duncan served as senior vice president and chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) since 2000. Duncan served as the primary spokesperson on economic and mortgage market developments and performance for the MBA, a trade group representing 3,000 companies that make the majority of all residential, multifamily, and commercial real estate loans in the U.S.

Prior to joining the MBA in 1992, Duncan worked on Capitol Hill as a LEGIS Fellow and staff member on the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs, and at the U.S Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. He has been elected to the Board of Directors for the National Association of Business Economists, is a member of the American Economics Association and the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, and is past president of the Housing Statistics Users Group.

Duncan is a frequent speaker on national and state economic outlooks and housing and mortgage market conditions, and has been listed in the "Top 100 Most Influential People in Real Estate" by Inman News.

Duncan received his Ph. D. in Agricultural Economics from Texas A&M University and his B.S. and M.S. in Agricultural Economics from North Dakota State University.