Treasurer

Jim Bander

Decision Analytics - North America,
Experian Information Solutions, Inc.

Biographical Profile

Education

  • Ph.D., Industrial & Operations Engineering, University of Michigan
  • M.S., Systems Engineering, University of Virginia
  • B.A., Mathematics, University of Virginia

Professional Experience

  • 2018-present: Analytics Market Lead & Data Scientist, Experian Decision Analytics
  • 2010-2018: National Manager, Decision Science/Risk Management, Toyota Financial Services
  • 2008-2010: Vice President, Solution Management & Research, Response Analytics, Inc.
  • 2006-2008: Assistant Vice President, Financial Planning & Analysis, Wells Fargo Bank
  • 2002-2004: Operations Research Specialist, Norfolk Southern Railway
  • 1999-2002 and 2004-2006: Visiting Lecturer, University of Florida College of Business Administration

INFORMS Activities

  • Finance Committee member: 2019-present
  • Financial Services Section: various roles including Section treasurer & chairman, and chair of the Section’s student paper competition
  • Committee member, INFORMS O.R. & Analytics Student Team Competition
  • 2001 INFORMS Annual Meeting hosting committee member

Professional Honors and Activities

  • President’s Volunteer Service Award
  • Gartner Analytics Excellence Award
  • Information Week Elite 100 "Best in Analytics" Award
  • Drexel LeBow/CIO.com Analytics 50 Award
  • FICO Decision Management Award
  • Auto Finance Excellence Award

Selected Publications

  • The Great Deferral: Credit risk impact of COVID-19 payment relief
  • Fintech White Paper: Unsecured Personal Lending Trends
    The End of CARES Act Forbearances: How can mortgage servicers prepare?
  • The End of the Great Deferral: Credit risk impact of COVID-19 payment relief

Vision Statement

It is an honor to be nominated for the position of INFORMS treasurer. 

Before and during the pandemic, I served on the INFORMS Finance Committee, assisting the treasurer, which has given me a vantage point as INFORMS has risen to the twin challenges of virtual work and virtual/hybrid meetings.

Organizational Strengths:

Our organization is very strong in two specific senses:

  1. Our financial position and membership base are sound.
  2. We are the professional home to members whose work applying mathematics and data to the problems of society is especially relevant and timely. The paramount challenges that have emerged during COVID-19 have been those related to systems in areas such as supply chain and transportation management, healthcare, and information security.

Strategic Opportunities:

The next few years will offer strategic opportunities for INFORMS and its members. As an organization, we will find better and faster ways for faculty members to publish research results. We will more efficiently and effectively disseminate relevant knowledge and skills to students, practitioners, policymakers, and others. We will make better use of hybrid and virtual meetings and other online outlets. We will find new ways to reach more people, while creating fresh opportunities for collaboration between industry and academia.

Embracing Data Science and Machine Learning:  

Individually and collectively, INFORMS and our members will continue to grow and change. As employers and the public increasingly use phrases such as data science and machine learning, more of us will adopt those terms to describe our vocational activities. Our INFORMS colleagues will be the ones whose work clarifies to what extent these encompass new skills and techniques, and to what extent they simply represent new vocabulary for statistics, operations research, analytics, and decision analysis. The increased attention to data-driven decision-making by employers, students, and the public will certainly create growth opportunities for INFORMS members and the organization as a whole. 

My own perspective: I was a student member in 1995 when the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) and The Institute of Management Science (TIMS) merged to create INFORMS. About 11 years later, the introduction of the word analytics created opportunities – along with certain challenges and some healthy skepticism – for people who identified with operations research and management science. Ultimately, INFORMS made changes – some bigger than others – and the organization has become larger and stronger than before. During most of this period of change, I worked at Toyota and recognized that INFORMS was undergoing a process of kaizen, continuous improvement. I’m confident that the industry’s focus on data science and machine learning will create at least as many opportunities now as the growth of analytics did then. 

A personal commitment:

The business model of INFORMS was historically based on paper journals and physical meetings. That model is evolving quickly. If elected treasurer, I promise to serve as a trustworthy steward of our community’s resources while helping drive that transformation.