Meet Our Experts

William Nayda, Ph.D.

Managing Director & Founder Richmond, VA

Bill Nayda is the Managing Director and founder of Second Pillar Consulting. He has 20 years of banking and insurance experience, most of which has been focused on risk management, regulatory compliance, corporate governance and structure, and risk-based pricing. Prior to founding Second Pillar Consulting, Bill spent ten years at Capital One in balance sheet strategy, economic capital, regulatory relations and started the bank’s model risk management group. He also helped model and manage enterprise risk at Travelers companies and Allied Irish Bank’s U.S. subsidiary. Bill leads his firm in assisting banks with capital adequacy, regulatory compliance, and model validation. Developing stress testing, balance sheet and income statement forecasting solutions for community and regional banks, as well as various valuation models for Bloomberg and hedge funds. Bill has a passion for teaching and has developed and teaches Enterprise Risk Management for Community Banks as well as for the RMA, where he developed a stress testing workbook for community banks. He also teaches Bank Credit Analysis and Bank Enterprise Risk Management for S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Susan Devine, CPA

Senior Consultant Fairfax, VA

Susan Devine, CPA, is a Senior Consultant with Second Pillar Consulting with over 30 years of audit and model validation experience. She serves as Lead Analyst on AML validations and specializes in model documentation and AML model validations and has validated PATRIOT Officer, Fiserv, and Banker’s Toolbox AML models. Susan started her career at Deloitte and then went on to become an auditor at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before leaving to start her own consulting company assisting financial institutions and government agencies with project management, audit, and technical writing. Some of her engagements include: Capital One, E*TRADE, Food and Drug Administration, Housing and Urban Development, Federal Aviation Administration, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Susan is a Certified Public Accountant.

Suzanne Hayden

Consultant Santa Fe, NM

Suzanne Hayden is a consultant and subject matter expert in the area of anti-money laundering. Ms. Hayden is a former DOJ senior prosecutor and Special Advisor to the Attorney General, and a world-renowned expert in asset forfeiture who pioneered the use of financial investigations as means of undermining a criminal state and pursuing its leader. Currently she works as a consultant providing anti-money laundering and countering the finance of terrorism expertise to domestic and international clients. Former international prosecutor with over 30 years of experience in worldwide organized crime and narcotics prosecutions, technical assistance delivery in anti-corruption, ethics, transnational money laundering, terrorist financing, narcotics trafficking and war crimes. She led one of the earliest global stolen assets investigations against a sitting state’s leader, spearheading the financial investigation of then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, locating billions of dollars stolen by him and orchestrating his eventual indictment as an international war criminal at the Hague. Ms. Hayden also was the lead prosecutor of one of the most important and effective Continuing Criminal Enterprise prosecutions of the Cali Drug Cartel in the 1990s, targeting its financial and logistical support lines from Colombia into the US. She has developed and conducted training modules for international police, judges and prosecutors on ethics, anti-corruption, asset confiscation and financial crimes; conducted consultations and prepared legislation at the request of over 25 countries. Served as senior advisor in International Organizations, the US Intelligence Community and the US Department of Justice. Ms. Hayden was a delegate to the Financial Action Task Force, addressing international best practices in the field of terrorist financing, money laundering and asset forfeiture.

Bill Hood, Ph.D., ABD

Senior Consultant Cedar Grove, NC

Bill Hood is a Senior Consultant with Second Pillar whose career spans over 25 years in the financial services industry. Most recently he was a Senior Vice President at BB&T in charge of re-implementing QRM for ALM and FTP. Prior to that he was the Capital Management Production Manager where he led the production of the CCAR stress tests for the bank. As a Senior Consultant with Second Pillar, Bill has worked on model validations in the area of ALM, prepayments, deposit studies, liquidity, and anti-money laundering. Bill also headed up ALM for Hancock Holding Company, The South Financial Group, and Capital One as well as working in the ALM departments of First Union and Wachovia Corp. At Capital One Bill worked with BancWare and implemented BancWare at South Financial. He also implemented Empyrean at Hancock Financial and completed the third-party validation of the vendor model.

Elke Hood, Ph.D.

Senior Consultant Cedar Grove, NC

Dr. Elke Hood is a Senior Consultant with Second Pillar advising clients on model validations and providing guidance on econometric techniques, modeling theory, and model calibration. She implemented and ran the regional quarterly economic model for the State of Georgia. In addition, she co-directed the design, construction, and operation of historical databases and projections of major economic variables for the annual “Economic Yearbook” issue of Georgia Trend. Dr. Hood is frequently sought out by our clients for her in-depth knowledge of econometrics and programming skills. She is an expert in advanced econometric modeling techniques and has performed numerous validations of stress testing models as well as CECL models. Her areas of expertise encompass General and Generalized Linear models including Poisson, Negative Binomial and Tweedie models, Hazard models, ARIMAX models, Robust Linear models, LASSO regression as well as other advanced techniques. Dr. Hood was also an independent consultant for Capital One Bank where she worked on the firm’s economic capital and stress testing models.

Lorraine Magee, J.D.

Consultant Bristow, VA

Lorraine Magee, J.D. is a Consultant with Second Pillar and works on a variety of model validations, including AML, ALM, DFAST, and other stress testing models. She assists Second Pillar clients in conducting compliance gap analyses, completing quality assurance reviews, and developing model documentation and other technical documents. As an attorney, Lorraine began her career representing airlines, manufacturers, and their insurers in complex and multi-district cases at the trial and appellate levels. She co-authored a state-by-state manual on evaluating personal injury and wrongful death cases and lectured at a national aviation conference on that topic. After over a decade in private practice, she worked for several years with the Board on Professional Responsibility for the District of Columbia Bar. Lorraine’s focus on research and writing led her to leave law and expand her scope as a technical writer and editor for public, private, and non-profit organizations.

Bill Nayda, Jr.

Principal Austin, TX

Bill Nayda, Jr. is a Principal at Second Pillar Consulting where he develops and validates quantitative models for community and regional banks related to CECL, AML, and stress testing. Prior to joining Second Pillar, he was an associate at Promontory Financial Group assisting clients on matters related to model validation, model risk management, and the development of quantitative models for stress testing and CECL. While at Promontory, Bill worked with a number of clients conducting model validations in the areas of stress testing, project finance, structured finance, transaction monitoring systems, and sanctions screening systems. He has experience in developing PPNR models and credit models for several regional banks for DFAST as well as CCAR documentation remediation. Bill also assisted in the development of Promontory’s CECL modeling framework and application tool for calculating ACL. He previously interned at CPPIB in their portfolio management group as well as Contingent Macro Advisors performing quantitative analysis and market research.

Nathan Nayda

Principal Austin, TX

Nathan Nayda is a Principal at Second Pillar and has completed numerous model validations for clients in the areas of Anti-Money Laundering, stress testing, Asset Liability Management, and CECL. Nathan has also assisted clients with model governance by developing policies, standards, and procedures. Prior to joining Second Pillar, Nathan worked at Promontory Financial Group as a member of the quantitative methodologies group where he completed a number of model validations.

Brett Olsen, Ph.D.

Consultant Cedar Falls, IA

Brett Olsen, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) and a Consultant to Second Pillar Consulting. Dr. Olsen works with Second Pillar on consulting engagements providing assistance in regression analysis and review of balance sheet and income statement modeling. Dr. Olsen is published in the areas of firm valuation, real estate finance, investment performance, and corporate governance. He currently teaches intermediate financial management and international financial management and has previously taught security analysis and corporate finance. He acts as an advisor to a student-managed equity investment portfolio, a position he also has held at two previous universities.

George Redka

Senior Consultant Leesburg, VA

George Redka is a Senior Consultant with Second Pillar and has completed numerous model validations and developed customized automated software tools for client’s needs. George is currently building the aggregator model platform, and has worked with many clients on large databases, working as a conduit between the data and the analysts. George started his career as a system engineer with Electronic Data Systems, and most recently, as a Senior Software Engineer with Real Networks. He has nearly 30 years of experience in software design and development and his diverse experience includes progressing through technical and leadership roles in the telecommunications, federal government application systems, and mobile entertainment industries. George has expertise in developing and managing client/server application software, proficient in Java EE, Oracle, SQL, SQL Server, Spring, XML, Python, Perl, Solaris, Linux, Unix, Confluence, Jira, JBoss, Tomcat, Apache and Git. He has significant experience with integrating mobile solutions and legacy systems, as well as software development methodologies to include Waterfall and Scrum (Agile). George is deeply skilled in the development and management of project schedules, coordination of project tasks and deliverables, customer relationship management, leadership, and improvement of business processes throughout the software development cycle.

Michelle D. Stafford

Senior Consultant Palmyra, VA

Michelle Stafford is a Senior Consultant at Second Pillar with over 20 years of experience in Learning & Development. She specializes in professional, leadership, and new hire development, and has built and managed L&D programs that have touched all levels of an organization. Having spent 22 years with Capital One, Michelle designed, developed, and delivered college campus hire rotation programs, as well as people leader and emerging leader development programs. As an expert in the area, Michelle consulted with Senior Leaders to build specialized programs designed to cultivate associates in the analyst and credit job families, ensuring these associates acquired the necessary skills to meet the ever-changing business and industry needs. She has a passion for helping associates gain the skills and competencies needed to deliver at their fullest potential, while working to meet the business’ needs. Michelle has a degree in Business Management from Virginia Tech and started her career as a Meeting & Event Planner. She leveraged the tools gained early in her career to build project management and organizational skills which have enhanced her learning and development expertise. Michelle has built a reputation as being a “fixer,” by taking programs that are not meeting their desired outcomes, working with leadership to identify new strategies, and restructuring and relaunching to meet the specific needs of both the learners and the organization. As a Leader, Michelle champions all aspects of program design and execution and empowers, guides, and develops her team through strategic deliverables, while also instilling in them a sense of dedication and excellence. As a life-long learner and advocate of the L&D realm, Michelle leads not only with a lens of strategy but also with her heart!

Jeffrey R. Stokes, Ph.D.

Senior Consultant Lincoln, NB

Jeffrey R. Stokes, Ph.D. is Professor and Hanson-Clegg-Allen Chair in Agricultural Banking and Finance at the University of Nebraska and is also one of our modeling experts and model validators. He has over 40 publications in refereed journals and is respected in the areas of allowance modeling, loss forecasting, and credit risk migration analysis.  He has consulted for numerous top ten banks individually.  Professor Stokes has published four papers on calculating default probabilities using Markov chains and currently has a white paper on utilizing the principle of maximum entropy to properly stress transition matrices.  Dr. Stokes’ specialty areas are real estate valuation and default including allowance and credit risk migration modeling, value-at-risk, term structure, and stress testing.  He is actively engaged in finance and real estate research and frequently publishes in peer reviewed academic journals such as Quarterly Journal of Finance, the Journal of Real Estate Research, and the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics.   For over fifteen years he has worked with Second Pillar and previously with Capital One building and validating models.  He is proficient in artificial intelligence and machine learning and has been working on methods to evaluate the amount of stress applied to input factors and their comparability to the Federal Reserve scenarios.   He teaches Agricultural Finance and Appraisal at Nebraska.  Dr. Stokes has held academic appointments at the University of Tennessee, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Northern Iowa.  He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Texas A&M University with a minor in Financial Economics from the Mays School of Business at A&M, his M.S. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Missouri, and his B.S. from Purdue University.