Econoday Leadership Team

Mark Pender, Editor-in-Chief

Mark Pender began his career at Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienste where he covered U.S. economic news for the German market. Moving to Market News International, he covered economics and also created and compiled proprietary U.S. economic reports on capital goods, retail trade, and job openings. Mark has also worked as a Latin American desk editor for Dow Jones Newswires and was New York Bureau Chief for AFX news where his work was published in the Financial Times and International Herald Tribune. He has had a nearly 20-year association with Econoday and moved to the post of Senior Editor in 2015. Mark is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a BA English and Claremont Graduate School with an MA in English. Furthermore, he earned his FMA Film from the University of Southern California and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Jeremy Hawkins, Senior European Economist

After four years working as an econometric modeller and economic forecaster at the Bank of England, Jeremy spent almost twenty years on the trading floor of Bank of America’s European headquarters in London. Initially as Chief Economist for Europe and subsequently as Head of European FX short-term interest rate strategy, his primary role was to provide expert on-the-spot analysis of market-moving statistics and events and their implications for asset prices. He joined Econoday in 2007 as their senior European economist and since 2005 has lectured at London Financial Studies on the impact on economic data on financial markets. Jeremy has a BA in economics and econometrics from the University of Sheffield where he was also awarded the economics prize.

Alana Kleinberger, Chief Operating Officer

Alana Kleinberger joined Econoday in 2017 as the General Manager / Director of Business Development. Alana oversees the day to day operations of Econoday and functions as the Relationship Manager across the vast spectrum of Econoday clients.

Alana has over 10 years of experience in the financial services industry, most recently in FinTech. As the Manager of Business Development at ASI, Alana helped to grow their cloud platform enabling financial advisors and wealth management companies with digital solutions. Prior to ASI, Alana was with Bloomberg where she managed the terminal business at a large financial institution.

Alana began her career in the Real Estate Business Advisory Services group at PwC where she managed the CMBS side of the business. She is a graduate of Penn State University.

Catherine Varnau, Director of Human Resources and Accounting

Catherine Varnau received both a BS and BA degree from Purdue University in Psychology and Sociology. After moving to Chicago, she received an MBA from De Paul University with an emphasis in Finance and Accounting.

Professional career includes consulting in operations, accounting, and benefit plans with a wide variety of clients and industries while working for consulting firms such as Hewitt Associates and PricewaterhouseCooper. She has worked at Econoday, Inc. since 2009

After 20 years in Chicago, she moved to Berkeley, CA. She now has two adult sons. Catherine and her family enjoy going to music events and festivals and traveling in the US and internationally.

Ken Partridge, Chief Technology Officer

Ken Partridge has decades of experience with big data, whether it’s in Hollywood, Silicon Valley or Wall Street.

From movie reviews and theatre show times and disseminating gigabytes of streaming chat data to getting economic numbers to millions of people, the art of efficiently, quickly via cost-effective methods has always been the top priority.

Ken has worked with startups from the incubator stage to release an expansion, successfully curating the user’s data experience every step of the way.

Max Sato, Economic Reporter

Max Sato is a journalist with about 40 years’ experience writing and editing macro-economic policy, financial, energy and political news, while managing teams at global news organizations. He helped launch Reuters Financial Television in Asia in 1995 and Market News International in Tokyo in 2005.

As Tokyo bureau chief for MNI, Max expanded news and data coverage and modernized the technical delivery of real-time information. Prior to that he was chief correspondent for BridgeNews in Toronto and a senior correspondent for Reuters Canada.

He has been a member of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (1987-1997, 2003-2020, a visiting member since 2023), The Japan National Press Club (2003-2018), and The Toronto Association for Business and Economics (2002-2003).

Theresa (Terry) Sheehan, Economic Reporter

Terry has followed the US economic data for over 35 years. First working with economic databases at McGraw/Hill-Data Resources, then as an economic data reporter at Market News International, and later as an analyst at Stone McCarthy Research Associates.

She is deeply familiar with the major high-frequency data reports that drive the financial news cycle. She has followed the ins-and-out of the Board of Governors and District Bank Presidents, and developments in monetary policy as conditions have changed since the Volcker years.

Terry is a graduate of the University of Maryland University College with bachelor’s degrees in English, Information Management, and Psychology.

Advisors

Anne Picker, Chief Economist

Anne Picker is the former Chief Economist of Econoday and architect of our content strategies for educating investors. Her passion is the international markets. Anne began monitoring global conditions before it became fashionable and thrives on helping investors understand the importance of integrating a global perspective into investment strategies. Anne has a BS in BA from Rutgers University and her MBA and ABD in economic growth from New York University. She taught a highly popular online global investing class at the University of Illinois. Anne is the author of the book, “International Economic Indicators and Central Banks”, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2007.