Gail H. Stone, executive director of the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System, will be the guest speaker when the Rotary Club meets at noon on Monday at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.
The Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System has a market value of approximately $7.75 billion, providing benefits to over 34,000 retired public employees. Active membership now stands at 46,000
Stone became executive director of the fund on July 1, 2001, having served in the capacity of deputy director for the three previous years. She had been made the associate director/investments in 1991, shortly after joining the system. She is responsible for administrative oversight of the APERS fund, as well as those of the Arkansas State Police Retirement and the Arkansas Judicial Retirement Systems.
Prior to coming to Arkansas, she was vice president in charge of trading for Altair Financial Corp., a managed futures firm in Greenwich, Conn. She began her investment career on Wall Street, working in the managed futures departments of both Shearson and Merrill Lynch. Stone also spent time as an institutional trader of currency and interest rate futures for the British-based Johnson Matthey & Wallace (later acquired by Mocatta Futures), counting among her clients primary banks and several institutional money management firms.
Stone received her degree in government from Smith College in Northampton, Mass. In addition, she is the author of “The Challenges of Marketing and Servicing to Public Pension Plans” (1996), as well as an editor for “The Journal of Public Pension Plans” (1996-1998). Stone has been a member of The Bank of New York Advisory Board since its inception in 1995. In 1999, she graduated from the Harvard University JFK School of Government program for senior executives in state and local government.
Stone was elected to the board of directors of the Council of Institutional Investors in 2003. In 2005, she was elected as treasurer of the board and served in that position through 2008. In 2014, Stone was elected second vice president of the National Association of State Retirement Administrators and sits on the NASRA Executive Committee.
See SPEAKERS on page 2A
In 2015 she was again elected to the board of directors of the CII and presides as treasurer and chair of the Audit Committee.
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The Rev. Steve Pelz, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church since 1999, will be the guest speaker when the Kiwanis Club meets at noon on Wednesday at First Presbyterian Church.
Pelz has served in the ministry for more than 40 years. He graduated from Siloam Springs High School, Texas Eastern University in Tyler and Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
He has been married to Kay Pelz, an employee at Hugh Goodwin Elementary, for 40 years. Steve and Kay Pelz have two children, a daughter, Amy Williams, who is a school counselor at Yocum Elementary and a son, Trey Pelz, who owns Clear Marketing in Branson, Mo., and four grandchildren.
(Organizations interested in listing a speaker in Speakers Circuit should send information about the speaker to [email protected]. A club member should provide background information on their speakers in writing or by e-mail to the News-Times. The deadline for submitting background information is 5 p.m. on Thursday for the following Sunday’s newspaper).