Ira G. Kawaller is the President of Kawaller & Co., LLC, a financial consulting company based in Brooklyn, NY, specializing in assisting commercial enterprises in their use of derivative instruments in managing their financial risk. In addition to his responsibilities with Kawaller & Company, Mr. Kawaller is also the Managing Partner of the Kawaller Fund, LP.

Prior to founding Kawaller & Co., Mr. Kawaller was the Vice President-Director of the New York Office of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he was responsible for promoting financial futures and options to the professional financial community. Before the CME, he held positions at J. Aron & Company, AT&T, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

A prolific author, Mr. Kawaller's articles have appeared in Derivatives Quarterly, Derivatives: Tax/Regulation/Finance, The Financial Analysts Journal, The Journal of Derivatives, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of the International Association of Financial Engineers, AFP Express, and Risk Magazine.

He is currently a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Derivatives Implementation Group (DIG), and much of his work in recent years has related to aspects of FAS 133 – the U.S. accounting standard that pertains to derivative instruments. In prior years he was a trustee of both the Futures Industry Institute and the Securities Industry Institute and a member of the board of directors of the International Association of Financial Engineers.

Mr. Kawaller has held adjunct professorships at Columbia University and Polytechnic University. He received a Ph.D. in Economics, from Purdue University.