At a meeting held March 24th in Indian Wells, CA, the AFSA Marketing Committee elected George Halloran of Ford Financial as its new chair. Steven Hess of Centex Home Equity and Dan Barnett of Household International are the committee's new co-vice chairs.

Halloran, vice president of global strategic planning for Ford Financial, has global responsibility for strategic development, mergers and acquisitions and business intelligence. Previously, he was executive director of marketing and sales for Ford Financial Europe. He joined Ford Financial in 1975 as an analyst in Information Technology (IT) and served in a variety of management positions in IT, Financial Analysis, Business Planning, Staff Operations and Field Operations. From 1994 until 2000, he served as a director of Ford Financial Europe in both field operations and staff positions, first in Amsterdam and then in the U.K. headquarters. Halloran earned his bachelor's degree in physics from Pennsylvania State University and his master's degree in management from the University of Southern California.

Steven Hess, executive vice president of marketing for Centex Home Equity, is responsible for developing marketing strategies and executing marketing programs designed to support all origination channels. His marketing responsibilities include a national retail branch network, two centralized call centers and a wholesale broker/correspondent division. The Centex Home Equity Marketing department generates over 500,000 consumer leads per year supporting over 800 retail loan officers. The department also manages the company's Web site (www.CentexHomeEquity.com) and is responsible for all service quality and e-commerce initiatives companywide.

Hess has over 24 years experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Centex in February 1997, he served in a similar capacity as SVP for Corporate Marketing for Ford Consumer Finance Company and Meritor Credit Corporation (the former home equity lending division of GE Capital).

Dan Barnett is Director, e-Commerce Marketing for Household International. He is responsible for all online marketing and web development activities for Household's consumer finance brands, HFC and Beneficial. Barnett first started working in the Consumer Finance industry over ten years ago. He also spent two years as a Managing Director at Xceed, Inc.—a global digital consulting firm.

The AFSA Marketing Committee provides members with a forum to discuss marketing topics and issues involving the consumer finance industry. Participants in all sectors of the financial services industry benefit from this group's yearly professional development meeting. Senior marketing executives interested in joining the Marketing Committee may contact Lynne Strang, AFSA's staff liaison to the committee, at lstrang@afsamail.org.