What’s Going On with the U.S. Economy?

Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, The PNC Financial Services Group; Director, The Economic Club of Pittsburgh

Gus Faucher

Augustine (Gus) Faucher is senior vice president and chief economist of The PNC Financial Services Group, serving as the principal spokesperson on all economic issues for PNC.

Prior to joining PNC as senior macroeconomist in December 2011, Faucher worked for 10 years at Moody’s Analytics (formerly Economy.com), where he was a director and senior economist. He was responsible for running the firm’s computer model of the U.S. economy, edited a monthly publication on the U.S. economic outlook, covered fiscal and monetary policy, and analyzed various regional economies. Previously, he worked for six years at the U.S. Treasury Department, and taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. He was named senior vice president in March 2015, deputy chief economist in February 2016, and to his current role in April 2017.

Faucher is frequently cited in international, national, and regional media outlets including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and Nightly Business Report, and is regularly featured on CNBC, CNN and Fox Business. In addition, he appears regularly on CBS Radio, NPR and Marketplace.

He serves on the board of directors of The Economic Club of Pittsburgh – the local chapter of National Association of Business Economics (NABE). He is also co-chair of the Financial Roundtable of NABE.

Faucher earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, with concentrations in labor economics and public economics. He also has a B. A. in economics from Cornell University.

Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair, International Economic Relations / Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy and Department of Economics, UC San Diego; Director, GPS Peter F. Cowhey Center on Global Transformation; Co-Founder and COO, Amplisal Inc.

Joshua Graff Zivin

Joshua Graff Zivin holds the Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair in International Economic Relations at UC San Diego, with faculty positions in the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) and the Department of Economics. He serves as director of the GPS Peter F. Cowhey Center on Global Transformation, co-director of the UC San Diego Global Health Institute and research director for International Environmental and Health Studies at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).  Graff Zivin is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  In 2020, he co-founded Amplisal, a firm specializing in remote and hybrid workforce management, where he currently serves as COO.

Graff Zivin is an economist whose broad research interests include the environment, health, development, and innovation economics. He has published numerous articles on a wide range of topics in top economic, policy and science journals. Much of his current work is focused on three distinct areas of research: the relationship between the environment, health and human capital, the economics of innovation and productivity, and the design of health interventions and their economic impacts.

Professor Graff Zivin received both his Ph.D. and M.S. from UC Berkeley and a B.A. from Rutgers University. Prior to joining UC San Diego in 2008, he spent 11 years on the faculty at Columbia University, where he served as professor of economics in the Mailman School of Public Health and the School of International and Public Affairs and directed the Ph.D. Program in Sustainable Development. From 2004-05, Graff Zivin served as Senior Economist for Health and the Environment on the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Director of Investment, PNC Institutional Asset Management

Shelly Henbest

Shelly has more than 20 years of experience in the investment industry and is a Director of Investment at PNC Institutional Asset Management. Shelly is based in San Diego and covers the San Diego, Northern California, and Nevada markets. In her role she delivers OCIO (Outsourced Chief Investment Officer) solutions, and manages custom investment portfolios, for institutional clients including nonprofit organizations, defined benefit pension plans, and corporations. Prior to joining PNC, she was a Senior Credit Analyst and member of the Portfolio Management team at Chandler Asset Management, an institutional investment advisory firm in San Diego. Prior to working at Chandler, she was an Equity Research Analyst at Bear Stearns in New York and a 3-year member of Institutional Investor magazine’s “All-America Research Team.” Shelly earned her B.A. in Business Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a member of the CFA Society of San Diego and serves on the Society’s Board of Directors and holds the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst.