CRI Team
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Charlie Copeland
Director,
Center for Economic & Fiscal Policy
Charlie Copeland is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He holds a BS and an MBA from Duke University.
Mr. Copeland is a prominent community leader in ISI's home state of Delaware. From 2002 through 2008, he served as a Delaware State Senator, rising to Senate Minority Leader's position. He emerged as a leading voice for government accountability, education reform, and criminal justice reform during his service.
Mr. Copeland serves as Board Chair of the Longwood Foundation, which has made more than $2 billion in grants to nonprofits since Pierre S. du Pont founded it in 1937. He also co-founded and serves as President of the Board of the Challenge Program, a nonprofit organization that trains at-risk youth in construction skills, and Vice President of the Board of the Mt. Cuba Center, which has protected more than 2,500 acres of open space in the Brandywine Valley.
Dr. Christopher Casscells, M.D.
Director,
Center for Health Policy
Dr. Christopher Casscells, MD, Policy Director, Center for Health Policy, Caesar Rodney Institute. Dr. Casscells was one of Delaware’s leading Board Certified Orthopaedic Surgeons. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and did his residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital. After a distinguished 30-year medical career, Dr. Casscells retired from practicing in January 2020.
Email: dr.casscells@gmail.com
Vil Ramunno
Vice President of
Communications & Operations
Vilayvanh “Vil” Ramunno is the vice president of communications and operations for the Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI). In this role, she directs the institute’s messaging, publications and media strategy while overseeing its day-to-day operations. Vil works closely with the board, policy directors and external partners to ensure CRI’s research and analysis are communicated with clarity, credibility and impact.
Since joining CRI in 2016, Vil has helped expand the institute’s communications and donor engagement across platforms and audiences.
Before CRI, Vil worked in advertising and business development for CBS Radio (WPHT Talk Radio) and New Main Stream Press (Metro Chinese Weekly and Metro Viet News) in Philadelphia, Pa. Earlier in her career, she also worked in equipment leasing, gaining firsthand experience in client relations and financial services.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in management from the University of Phoenix and pursues professional development to bring fresh ideas to CRI’s work.
Michelle F. Parsons, M.D.
Board Chair
Dr. Michelle Parsons is a private practice physician in Sussex County, DE, and has worked as a board-certified Emergency Medicine Physician for the University of Maryland at several Eastern Shore hospitals.
Dr. Parsons is a graduate of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA. She completed her surgical internship at the State University of New York and her residency at Christiana Care. Her undergraduate degree is in Biochemistry and Environmental Science from Rutgers University.
She is a former USAF flight surgeon, working with the Air Force Night Vision Test Center. She also served as the Chief of Aerospace Medicine for the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. While serving in the Air Force she was deployed to Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kuwait, and was awarded both the NATO Medal and the Armed Forced Service Medal.
Dr. Parsons was awarded the Delaware Small Business Association Minority Owned Business of the Year (2018) and was featured as a Delaware Today Top Doctor (2012).
Dr. Parsons is passionate about promoting truth, justice and conservative ideals in Delaware and is an “Institute on The Constitution” certified instructor of the Delaware Constitution. “I would love to see Delaware as that shining city on the hill and be an example of best practices for all other states to emulate.”
Dr. Parsons and her son, Ben, reside near Bethany Beach, DE, year-round. Dr. Parsons has her private practice in Rehoboth Beach, DE, where she makes house calls and practices primary, integrative, and aesthetic medicine since 2004.
Rick Levinson
Board Vice Chair
Rick is a native Delawarean, growing up in North Wilmington. He graduated from Mount Pleasant High School and then from Rider University with a B.S. in Business Administration. He accepted an invitation to work at SchagrinGAS Co. in 1973 as a third-generation member of the firm. He assumed the role of President in 1992. He became the Chairman and CEO of SchagrinGAS Co. in 2013.
He has served on the board of Delmarva Red Cross and is currently serving on the Board for Energi Insurance Co. He has been married for 38 years to his wife Sue and resides in the Hockessin area.
Emmanuel G. Fournaris, Esquire
Board Treasurer
Emmanuel is a Director at the Wilmington law firm of Gordon, Fournaris & Mammarella, P.A. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware (B.S. cum laude Accounting, 1980) and Delaware Law School of Widener University (J.D. with honors, 1983). He received his Master of Laws in Taxation from Temple University in 1985 and is admitted to practice law in the States of Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Mr. Fournaris is a member of the Tax and Commercial Law Sections of the Delaware Bar Association and a member of the Wilmington Tax Group. He is also a member of The International Association for Attorneys for Family-Held Enterprises. Mr. Fournaris received his certification in captive insurance and risk management from the University of Delaware in 2012.
Mr. Fournaris' practice focuses on taxation, commercial law, succession planning, business law, captive insurance, entity formation, mergers and acquisitions and opinion letters. Mr. Fournaris is also a presenter at the Delaware Tax Institute.
Brandon Brice, MS
Board Secretary
Brandon has stayed true to his commitment to service and learning, by earning a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from Howard University and a Master’s of Science from Rutgers University. As a Graduate student, he served as a fellow for the United Nations Foundation and the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Brandon is currently earning his Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Detroit-Mercy.
Brandon began his career as a staffer working on Capitol Hill for the Office of former United States Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. Upon graduation, he would serve as an Associate with the National Urban League’s Economic Opportunity Institute, fighting for financial literacy. He would then serve as Director of Education and African American Affairs in the Office of the New Jersey Governor, Hon. Chris J. Christie. His work focused on early Head Start programs, youth and education for stakeholders in the cities of Camden, Newark, Patterson and Trenton. He later relocated to Atlanta, where he worked with Veterans Empowerment Organization of Georgia, focusing on military families and homeless returning veterans and served in an Executive role with the Boy Scouts of America’s Career Apprenticeship Programs and as Director of Philanthropy and Equity for the United Way of Delaware. Today, Brandon serves as Vice President of Community Relations and College Advancement for Cecil College.
Brandon has given lectures at Princeton University, the Baltimore Harbor League, the National Black Law Students Association, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hamilton Society in Washington, D.C. He is a 2018 recipient of the Michigan Chronicle’s Distinguished Men of Excellence Award and the Spirit of Detroit Award in 2018. He is a proud member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Brandon serves as an Ethics Commissioner for New Castle County, appointed by New Castle County Executive Matt Meyers and was recently appointed by Delaware Governor John Carney to serve on the State Magistrate Screening Process. He currently serves on the Executive Board for the Caesar Rodney Institute, Lincoln Club of Delaware, Boy Scouts of America De Mar Va Council, Great Oaks Charter School, and is the Co-Founder of the 100 Black Men of Delaware Chapter. He resides in Wilmington, DE.
Dr. Stacie Beck
Board Member
Dr. Stacie Beck is an Associate Professor of economics at the University of Delaware. She has been with the University since 1986. Stacie earned a B.S. in Economics from Boston College and her Ph.D.in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. She has nearly a dozen research publications in peer-reviewed journals such as the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Education, and Journal of Applied Econometrics. She is an editorial board member of Eastern Economics Journal.
A review of her work: Research Publications
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"Globalization and Labor Force Participation," Journal of Economic Integration, V33 N3, Sept 2018 (joint with Soodong Park)
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"Measuring Tax Effects in Open Economies: The Example of the States of the US" in working papers.
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"Tax Effects on the Real Exchange Rate" (joint with Cagay Coskuner, Eastern Mediterranean University) Review of International Economics 15:854-868, 2007
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"High Inflation Episode of 1996-97 and the Bulgarian Currency Board" (joint with Jeffrey Miller, University of Delaware) International Journal of Development Economics 4:95-121, 2005
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"The Cost of Financial Capital: Evidence from Selected Caribbean Countries" (joint with Carlton Augustine, Howard University) International Journal of Development Economics 4:83-100, 2005
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"Money as Real Options in a Cash-in-Advance Economy" (joint with David R. Stockman, University of Delaware) Economic Letters 87:337-345, 2005
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"Commodity Storability and Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity," Journal of Applied Econometrics 16:115-132, 2001
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"The Effect of Budget Deficits on Exchange Rates: Evidence From Five Industrialized Economies," Journal of Economics and Business, December 1994, 46:397-408.
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"Cointegration and Market Efficiency in Commodities Futures Markets," Applied Economics, March 1994, 26: 249-258.
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"A Tests of the Intertemporal Hedging Theory of Commodities Futures Markets," Journal of Futures Markets, May 1993, 13: 223-236.
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"Ricardian Equivalence Proposition: Evidence from Foreign Exchange Markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, April 1993, 12: 154-169.
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"A Rational Expectations Model of Time Varying Risk Premiums in Commodities Futures Markets: Theory and Evidence," International Economic Review, February 1993, 34: 149-168.
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Working Papers and Other Publications "Money Neutrality: The Case of Japan" (with Saswati Mahapatra)
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"Tax Effects on International Trade" (with Alexis Chaves)
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"Tax Effects on Foreign Direct Investment" (with Alexis Chaves)
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"Theory of Tax Effects on International Trade and FDI"
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"The Option Value of Liquidity"
Gene Truono
Board Member
Gene Truono has nearly 30 years of regulatory compliance experience and most recently served as the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) for PayPal from October 2014 through August 2016. Prior to that, he was the Global Head of Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Counter Terrorist Financing (CTF), Anti-Corruption, and Sanction/OFAC Compliance for PayPal from March 2011 to October 2014. In that role, he built a global Financial Crimes Compliance (FCC) program interacting with regulators in Australia, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Luxembourg, and the United States.
He has presented to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) at the Money Value Transfer Conference in 2014 on Virtual Currency and new methods of Transaction Monitoring, as well as having served on the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) BSA Advisory Group (BSAAG) and co-chaired its sub-committee on Regulatory Reporting reform from 2013 to 2016.
Prior to that, he led major remediation projects at American Express Bank International and subsequently at Standard Chartered Bank for its global Private Bank and Correspondent Banking departments related to the rebuilding of both business's entire FCC programs, including Policies and Procedures, Customer Identification Program (CIP), Know Your Customer (KYC), transaction monitoring and Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC)/sanctions programs.
Additionally, he was instrumental in building JPMorgan Chase's Correspondent Banking and Trade Finance compliance program to meet the requirements of the USA Patriot Act. While at Chase Manhattan Bank USA, NA, he spearheaded an Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) and industry-wide project formulating the implementation of the revised Uniform Retail Credit Classification and Account Management Policy specifically related to credit limits and criteria for re-aging and minimum payment thresholds for open-end credit.
While head of Compliance at Associates National Bank (Delaware), later acquired by Citigroup, he was instrumental in the design and implementation of its Fair Lending and Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) programs and was recognized by the OCC for unique and innovative grant and loan products targeted specifically to low-income borrowers to make homeownership more affordable and accessible to those in most need of access to housing.
He is also a licensed Delaware attorney and has handled debt collection recovery litigation and Bankruptcy claims, consumer and commercial loan documentation, regulatory compliance, as well as bank licensing, corporate governance, and securities disclosure.
He has served on numerous boards and non-profit organizations related to community development, historic preservation, higher education, and assisting low to moderate-income individuals to obtain and maintain housing and small business lending.
Clinton S. Laird
Advisory Council Member
In 2010, Mr. Laird retired as CEO of Universata, a national healthcare IT firm specializing in the HIPAA compliant exchange of medical records. During his tenure there he was influential in the national discussion of medical record interoperability and related issues. Universata was acquired by HealthPort in June, 2011. Transitioning from a 25-year career in the insurance industry in 1999, Mr. Laird was a founding investor and executive with CapMed in early 2000. An industry leading personal health record company, CapMed was sold in 2003.
Mr. Laird's background includes positions as Board Chairman of the Blood Bank of Delmarva and a member of the Board of Managers of the Nemours Foundation and the A. I. duPont Hospital for Children. He was Board Chairman of Contact Wilmington and a board member of the YMCA of Delaware, The United Way of Delaware and the Delaware AeroSpace Education Foundation. He is a founding board member of Environmentalists for Education Reform, a nonprofit corporation devoted to promoting research and awareness of the importance of educational choices in revitalizing blighted urban areas, reducing urban sprawl, and creating sustainable cities.
Politically active nationally, Mr. Laird’s priority interests are advancing critical thinking curriculum and parental choice in education; discrediting climate change deceptions and rational energy policies. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He and his wife retired to Raleigh in 2011. They have 4 grown children.
Michael C. Maibach
Advisory Council Member
Mr. Maibach is a seasoned professional in global business diplomacy. From 2003-12 he was the President of the European-American Business Council, after serving for 18 years as the Vice President of Global Government Affairs at the Intel Corporation.
Mr. Maibach has earned MA degrees from Northern Illinois, Georgetown, Ashland, and the Institute of World Politics, where he is a Trustee.
Today he is Managing Director of the James Wilson Institute and a Distinguished Fellow on American Federalism at Save Our States. He speaks in classrooms and before civic groups, often in defense of the Founders’ Constitution and its Electoral College.