Greg Wittbecker
Wittsend Commodity Advisors

Aluminum - Speaker


Greg Wittbecker is a 38-year veteran of the aluminum industry, having held commercial and strategic management positions at Cargill, Wise Metals, Koch Industries and Alcoa. He retired from Alcoa in 2018 as vice president of industry analysis, after completing his assignment as managing director of Alcoa China. From 2018-2023, Wittbecker served in an advisory capacity to CRU International. This year, he launched his own private consulting firm, focused on strategic commercial consultant and price risk management for a select group of major clients.

Beatriz Landa
Novelis

Aluminum - Speaker


Bea Landa is vice president of Metal Procurement & Recycling at Novelis North America. In this role, she is accountable for the company’s scrap inputs purchasing strategy and execution, collaborating with global metal on prime, sheet ingot and hot band, and playing an active role in designing and deploying the strategy to achieve sustainability targets.

Since joining Novelis in 2011, Landa has held roles across the organization, including plant manager of the Greensboro plant, strategy director and VP specialties. She was also a founding member of the Women in Novelis (WiN) employee resource group. In 2020, she was named a STEP Ahead Honoree by the Manufacturing Institute.

Prior to Novelis, Landa was a senior associate with McKinsey & Company and an associate tax lawyer with Baker & McKenzie. She holds an MBA from The Wharton School and bachelor’s degrees in both law and business from Icade, Universidad Pontificia de Comillas in Spain. Landa also played soccer at a semiprofessional level during her college and early years as an attorney.

Abey K. Abraham
Ducker Carlisle

Aluminum - Speaker


Abey Abraham is a principal at Ducker Carlisle where he leads Ducker’s automotive and materials practice, specializing in transportation, mobility and electrification related client needs. Abraham holds a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Michigan State University. He has over 15 years of experience in the automotive materials space, understanding key drivers and strategic elements of lightweighting, materials substitution and joining, and expertise in metallic and non-metallic materials. Clients value Abraham’s expertise and leadership in pursuing growth strategies (organic and inorganic) to optimize solutions to address dynamic mobility and lightweighting trends and its supply chain. Abraham serves as the chairman of the Society of Automotive Analysts and is on the editorial advisory board for Lightweighting World Magazine. He is also an active member of the Society of Automotive Engineers.

Bret Biggers
Senior Economist, ISRI

Economic Outlook General Session - Moderator


Bret Biggers is a senior economist at ISRI. He collects, analyzes, and disseminates information on recycled commodity trends. He is the staff liaison for the Paper Division, Plastics Division, and the MRF Committee. Other efforts Biggers working on is the ISRI Specifications Circular, the Recyclability Protocol, the Recycled Materials Industry Market Conditions Survey, Trade Committee and Market Access Working Group. Biggers has addressed economic, markets, and sustainability issues throughout most of his career, writing articles and producing reports. He has worked at the National Waste & Recycling Association, Flexible Packaging Association, and consulted in the trucking, chemical, and specialty printing industries.

Thomas Walstrum
Senior Business Economist, Regional Analysis

Economic Outlook General Session - Speaker


Thomas Walstrum is a senior business economist in the economic research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. His responsibilities include the Seventh District's contribution to the Beige Book, the Chicago Fed Survey of Economic Conditions, and briefings for the Chicago Fed president on Seventh District economic conditions. He also is a contributing author to the Bank's Midwest Economy blog.

Walstrum holds a B.A. in economics from Wheaton College, Illinois, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago, with concentrations in labor and urban and regional economics.

Chris Lewon
Owner, Utah Metals Works, Inc.

Copper - Moderator


Chris Lewon graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in business management from the University of Utah and started his career in the metal recycling industry at Sims Metal in Sacramento, California. In late 1992 he returned to Utah and his family's company, Utah Metal Works, where he now is the VP of marketing and administration. This third-generation family-owned business is primarily a non-ferrous based recycling facility with an emphasis on wire chopping. Lewon has been active in ISRI and served as the Rocky Mtn Chapter chair from 2005 to 2007.

Edward Meir
Senior Commodity Consultant, Marex

Copper - Speaker


Edward Meir is senior commodity consultant for the Commodity Research Group. Over the past 20 years, he has provided research and consulting services to LME ring dealing clients, including MG Global, StoneX, EDF Man and most recently, Marex. Edward was recognized as the #1 overall base-metals analyst in terms of price forecasting accuracy in six of the 10 years between 2011-2020, and attained several top-three rankings in precious metals. Previous to his career in research, he worked with Trans World Metals trading aluminum and tin, also representing U.S.-based metals firms as a purchasing agent for aluminum and tin. He holds a BA in Economics from McGill University and MBA from New York University.

Sebastien Perron
Vice President Recycling Procurement, Wieland North America Recycling

Copper - Speaker


Sebastien Perron joined the metal recycling industry in 2004 in Montreal, Canada. Since then, he has worked at a variety of locations including Hong Kong, California and now Rhode Island. Perron has held leadership roles in operations, global trade and executive management. Perron joined Wieland as vice president of recycling procurement for Wieland North America Recycling in February 2022. He holds a global MBA from Manchester University, United Kingdom.

Andy Kireta
President and CEO, Copper Development Association, Inc.

Copper - Speaker


Andy Kireta Jr. serves as the President & CEO of the Copper Development Association Inc. (CDA) and as North American Regional Director for the International Copper Association (ICA), where he works to bring the value of copper and copper alloys to society. He develops and executes strategy to advocate policy and direct market action at the intersection of the needs of global copper producers, their downstream copper and copper alloy fabricator partners, and OEMs to deliver solutions that make the world, and our lives better every day.

Andy has served in various management positions since joining CDA in 1992, is a graduate Mechanical Engineer from Purdue University, and spent the early part of his career in the nuclear power industry.

Adam Dumes
Cohen USA

Ferrous - Moderator


Adam Dumes is a fourth-generation metal recycler with over 20 years in the industry. He currently chairs ISRI's Ferrous Division and has been a national board member for over 10 years. Dumes oversees ferrous sales and marketing for Cohen Recycling, headquartered in Middletown, Ohio.

Greg Holt
Senior Editor, Ferrous Metals, S&P Global Commodity Insights

Ferrous - Speaker


Greg Holt is a senior editor with the ferrous metals team at S&P Global Commodity Insights, based in Houston. He has prior experience as a reporter and editor covering shipping, metallurgical coal, non-ferrous metals and petrochemicals. From 2010-2020, he was based in Singapore primarily covering trade in steelmaking raw materials. Holt is a graduate of the University of Arizona with a B.A. in journalism/political science and a master's in international political economy from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Blake Hurtik
Editorial Manager, Argus Media

Ferrous - Speaker


Blake Hurtik is a Texas-based editorial manager at Argus Media, where he oversees the group's North American metals, chemicals, and fertilizer editorial operations. For metals, he manages as 12-person team that covers the ferrous scrap, nonferrous scrap, steel, ferro-alloy, minor metal and base metal markets. Prior to joining Argus in 2013, he was a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News. He has a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

Stephen T Miller
Ferrous Scrap Advisor, CRU

Ferrous - Speaker


Stephen Miller started his career in the metal recycling industry in 1978 at Luria Brothers in Cleveland, Ohio. Over the last 40 plus years, he has worked in all capacities in the trading business. He has held positions in both domestic and international recycled materials trading. In addition to recycled material, Miller was at the forefront of the pig iron trade and established a pig iron distribution company under the name of Ferrosource, Inc. Most recently, Miller has concentrated on the recycled material export market and regularly does consulting for several companies in the industry.

Michael Friedman
President, Sustainable Management Corp.

Global Markets - Moderator


Michael Friedman entered the business in 1976 as a scrap buyer for Colonial Metals Co. (Columbia, PA). In 1984, he founded Friedman Metals Brokerage Co. One of his first actions was to join ISRI. In 2000, the company was sold to Industrial Services of America (Louisvile, KY). Sustainable Management Corp. was created in 2009 to focus on difficult to recycle metal and oxide residues on a global basis. Michael is a graduate from the University of Miami (FL) and annually attends extractive metallurgy from industrial waste classes at the Colorado School of Mines.

Josephita Harry
Pan American Zinc

Global Markets - Speaker


Josephita Harry, vice-president of sales in the Non-Ferrous division at Pan American Zinc, located in Miami, Florida. Harry graduated from the University of Madras with a Bachelor of Engineering in electronics and instrumentation. She has over two decades of experience in International Business with 10 years in the Metal Recycling industry.

Harry’s passion for recycling began with a school project in 1995 called “Clean Up India” with a focus on recycling / waste management that led her to participate at the national level as a young child scientist. Today, Harry oversees all non-ferrous trading for Pan American Zinc. She is currently serving as vice chair of ISRI’s Trade Committee, Co-chair of the ISRI Women in Recycling’s (WIR) Council and director-at-large in the Southeast chapter.

Joe Pickard
Chief Economist and Director of Commodities, ISRI

Global Markets, Nickel/Stainless - Speaker


Joe Pickard serves as the Chief Economist and Director of Commodities at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc. where he conducts research and analysis on commodity and scrap market developments and the key economic role that recycling plays in the United States and abroad.

Pickard regularly provides information and insights on the primary and recycled iron and steel, nonferrous metal, paper, plastics and electronics markets to the 1,300 ISRI member companies as well as to industry associations, policymakers, the press and the general public.

As a current member of the Environmental Technologies Trade Advisory Committee and Industry Trade Advisory Committee No. 5, he serves as an advisor on scrap-related trade issues to the Commerce Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Pickard previously served as the economist for The International Copper Study Group in Lisbon, Portugal and as a research analyst at Slayton & Associates in Alexandria, Virginia. He previously worked at nonprofit organizations including the Urban Institute and the Pew Charitable Trusts. Pickard holds a master’s degree in Economics from Virginia Tech, a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Loyola University Maryland, and also studied at George Mason University and K.U. Leuven in Belgium.

Craig Boswell
Co-founder and President, HOBI Interntational, Inc.

Global Markets - Speaker


Craig Boswell is co-founder and president of HOBI International, Inc., and has more than 30 years of experience in the design, development, and deployment of electronics demanufacturing and recycling techniques. Additionally, Boswell is HOBI’s chief industry consultant on demanufacturing, design for disassembly and reverse logistics programs. Boswell has published and presented numerous papers on electronic products recycling and the keys to designing more recyclable products. Boswell has served the industry in a variety of roles including as chairman of ISRI’s Electronics Division and as a member of several standards creation efforts. Boswell holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, and an M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Dallas. Connect with Craig on Twitter at @CraigBHOBI.

Dave Bestwick
Dominion Nickel Alloys

Nickel/Stainless - Speaker


Dave Bestwick has been with Dominion Nickel for 15 years. During this time, he has served as president of the ISRI Empire Chapter. He is currently the co-chair of the Safe Operations Committee for ISRI national. Prior to his employment for Dominion Nickel, Bestwick was a manager in the raw materials department of a melt shop in western Pennsylvania. He currently lives about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh with his wife Kristi and their two teenage children.

Nidhi Turakhia
Partner and Executive Vice President, Allied Alloys

Nickel/Stainless - Speaker


Nidhi Turakhia is a partner and executive vice president of Allied Alloys and Titan Metals Corporation. She has been in the industry for over two decades. Her primary responsibilities include global metals trading and overseeing human resources, logistics, project improvement and developments, and indirect purchasing, among several other departments.

Turakhia started in the industry in high school when she accepted a summer internship at her father's recycling company. After undergrad, she planned to attend law school but agreed to work for one year to help start a new metal recycling brokerage company at her father's request. She jumped in wholeheartedly to first Titan Metals, and later to Allied Alloys.

Turakhia holds an MBA from Houston Baptist University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Spanish from the University of Texas Austin. She is active in several organizations including ISRI where she serves as the President of the Gulf Coast Region and board member. She was instrumental in revitalizing the Women in Recycling (WIR) council and is co-chair of the Education & Training committee as well as the Council of Chapter Presidents. Her passion within this industry and in her personal life is to connect, mentor, and educate young executives and youth while actively supporting women from all walks of life and exposing them to the recycled materials industry.