Partner and Co-Chair, Constitutional and Appellate Law Practice Group, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Allyson N. Ho is a partner in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and co‐chair of the Firm’s nationwide Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group.
Mrs. Ho is “undoubtedly one of the premier appellate lawyers in the United States” (Chambers). She has presented over 100 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide, including multiple high‐stakes cases on behalf of business before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Her most significant winning arguments include a U.S. Supreme Court reversal worth billions of dollars for unionized employers in the Sixth Circuit; a U.S. Supreme Court reversal limiting the power of federal regulators; a multi‐billion dollar environmental win in the Fifth Circuit; a multi‐billion dollar commercial victory for the founder of a technology company in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court; a billion dollar environmental win in the Houston Court of Appeals; a nine‐figure commercial victory in the Corpus Christi Court of Appeals; and a nine‐figure arbitration win in the Fifth Circuit.
Among her numerous accolades, Mrs. Ho is one of only a small group of appellate lawyers nationwide, and the only one in Texas, to be nationally ranked by Chambers every year for the past ten years (2012‐21). She is also one of the few appellate lawyers nationwide to be named to the BTI Client Service All‐Stars List, an honor bestowed by the corporate counsel community for lawyers “who stand above all the others in delivering the absolute best in client service.” She is also routinely named as a leading appellate lawyer by Benchmark, The Best Lawyers in America®, The Legal 500, Texas Super Lawyers, and D Magazine.
Mrs. Ho has received the Gregory S. Coleman Outstanding Appellate Lawyer Award (Texas Bar Foundation, June 22, 2018), been named a “Distinguished Leader” (Texas Lawyer, Sep. 1, 2017) and “Appellate MVP” (Law360, Nov. 23, 2015), and been recognized on the “Appellate Hot List” (National Law Journal, Nov. 16, 2015). In addition, she has been profiled in “Texas Powerhouse” (Law360, Aug. 2, 2021), “Texas Appellate Power Couple” (Texas Lawbook, January 7, 2021), “Litigators of the Week” (The American Lawyer, May 8, 2020), “Litigation Powerhouse” (Law360, Aug. 10, 2016), “Supreme Court Insider” (National Law Journal, July 21, 2016), “Supreme Court Specialists, Mostly Male, Dominated Arguments This Term” (National Law Journal, May 11, 2016), “Attorney of the Year Finalist” (Texas Lawyer, Nov. 2, 2015), “Litigation Department of the Year” (Texas Lawyer, June 1, 2015), “Employment Group of the Year” (Law360, Jan. 13, 2015), “A Supreme Month: Lawyer Credits Preparedness in Ability to Argue Two U.S. High Court Cases in Three Weeks” (Texas Lawyer, Dec. 8, 2014), “High Court Debuts for Two Lawyers” (National Law Journal, Nov. 3, 2014), “Women in Business Awards” (Dallas Business Journal, Aug 29, 2014), “Litigation Departments of the Year” (Texas Lawyer, June 2, 2014), “Winning Women” (Texas Lawyer, Aug. 22, 2011), and “High court practitioners: increasingly diverse” (National Law Journal, June 6, 2011).
Federal and State Appellate Practice
Mrs. Ho has argued a series of high stakes, landmark cases on behalf of the business community before the U.S. Supreme Court. National Law Journal called her a “Veteran SCOTUS Advocate” in the “upper echelons of Supreme Court practice.” Law360 named her a “Supreme Court Star” and “one of the nation’s preeminent appellate lawyers.” And EmpiricalSCOTUS.com ranked her among “the most successful attorneys that currently practice before the Court.” Mrs. Ho once argued two significant business cases before the Court within the span of 21 days—including a “significant ruling for employers” that “paved a new path for companies paying millions of dollars in retiree health care benefits” (Law360), as well as a landmark administrative law dispute in which “several justices agreed with Ho’s contention that SCOTUS should revisit and overrule its own precedent” (Law360). She also prevailed against the EEOC in a case that the employment defense bar called “good news for employers across the country.” And in “the most important patent case in modern history” according to patent law experts, her argument before the Court was credited for “pick[ing] up two votes that pundits thought unreachable.”
She has appeared before every federal court of appeals in the country, including en banc arguments before the Fourth and Sixth Circuits. She has successfully represented business clients in every circuit, including the First (Pruco Life Insurance Company), Second (Swiss Federation; Rite Aid), Third (Johnson & Johnson), Fourth (Genex Services), Fifth (United Space Alliance LLC; Elliott Co.; MERSCORP; 24 Hour Fitness USA, Inc.; Stream Energy; Health Management Systems), Sixth (Deutsche Bank; American Airlines; M&G Polymers), Seventh (Expedia), Eighth (Cotter), Ninth (Boeing; JP Morgan Chase Bank), Tenth (Mitchell International), Eleventh (AstraZeneca), D.C. (FedEx), and Federal (Repros Therapeutics) Circuits.
In addition, Mrs. Ho regularly appears in state appellate courts across the country. She has argued numerous cases in the Texas Supreme Court, Texas appellate courts in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and Eastland, and state appellate courts in Arizona, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, prevailing on behalf of Ford Motor Company, PepsiCo, International Paper, Tenet, GameStop, Deutsche Bank, and Unit.
Government and Public Service Experience
Mrs. Ho has a distinguished record of experience at the highest levels of the federal government. She served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, Counselor to Attorney General John Ashcroft, and law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Jacques L. Wiener Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Her record of public service also includes appointments to various boards and commissions. Among the most notable are her election as a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a trustee of the United States Supreme Court Historical Society, and a trustee of the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society. She is also vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee, appointed by U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to evaluate potential appointments of all federal judges and U.S. Attorneys in Texas, and has previously served on the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas.
Other Background Information
An active pro bono litigator, Mrs. Ho works most frequently with the First Liberty Institute and as amicus counsel for the State and Local Legal Center, the National Organization for Victim Assistance, and the National Crime Victim Law Institute. She is a frequent public speaker and active member of the Federalist Society, the American Law Institute, and the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Policy Advisory Board.
Mrs. Ho graduated from Duke University magna cum laude with a B.A. in English, Rice University with an M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors. She was a member of the Law Review and Order of the Coif. She and her husband Jim, a federal judge, have a twin daughter and son.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
United States Senator, Utah
Elected in 2010 as Utah's 16th Senator, Mike Lee has spent his career defending the basic liberties of Americans and Utahns as a tireless advocate for our founding constitutional principles.
Senator Lee acquired a deep respect for the Constitution early on. His father, Rex Lee, who served as the Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, would often discuss varied aspects of judicial and constitutional doctrine around the kitchen table, from Due Process to the uses of Executive Plenary Power. He attended most of his father's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a unique, hands-on experience and understanding of government up close.
Lee graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science, and served as BYU's Student Body President in his senior year. He graduated from BYU's Law School in 1997 and went on to serve as law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and then with future Supreme Court Justice Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Lee spent several years as an attorney with the law firm Sidley & Austin specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Salt Lake City arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Lee served the state of Utah as Governor Jon Huntsman's General Counsel and was later honored to reunite with Justice Alito, now on the Supreme Court, for a one-year clerkship. He returned to private practice in 2007.
Throughout his career, Lee earned a reputation as an outstanding practitioner of the law based on his sound judgment, abilities in the courtroom, and thorough understanding of the Constitution.
Today, Lee fights to preserve America's proud founding document in the United States Senate. He advocates efforts to support constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic prosperity.
Lee is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and serves as Chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee protecting business competition and personal freedom.
He also oversees issues critical to Utah as the Chairman of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He serves on the Commerce Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, as well.
In the 114th Congress, Lee also began his tenure as Chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, where he works with his Republican colleagues in the Senate to introduce bold and innovative solutions to issues facing the American people.
Lee and his wife Sharon live in Alpine, Utah, with their three children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a two-year mission for the Church in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford; Presidential Scholar and a Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at The King’s College; and Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law.
He is a constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel—which provides scholarly and historical analyses of the Second Amendment. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author.
Executive Director, Coin Center
Jerry Brito is executive director of Coin Center, a non-profit research and advocacy center focused on the public policy issues facing cryptocurrency technologies such as Bitcoin.
Now, steel yourself for some serious signaling and credentialism:
Jerry lives in Annandale, Virginia, with his wife Kathleen, daughter Penny Lane, and their dog Jerkface.
Commissioner, United States Securities and Exchange Commission
Hester M. Peirce was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was sworn in on January 11, 2018.
Prior to joining the SEC, Commissioner Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was a Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where she advised Ranking Member Richard Shelby and other members of the Committee on securities issues. Commissioner Peirce served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul S. Atkins. She also worked as a Staff Attorney in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management. Commissioner Peirce was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims.
Commissioner Peirce earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Case Western Reserve University and her JD from Yale Law School.
Director, Financial Regulation and Corporate Governance, Center for American Progress
Todd Phillips is the director of financial regulation and corporate governance at American Progress. He has worked on issues as diverse as consumer financial protection, derivatives and securities market structure, bank capital and prudential regulation, and the laws governing agency rulemaking and adjudication. Phillips has experience in both Congress and the executive branch, having served as an attorney for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Administrative Conference of the United States, and the Oversight and Reform Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Phillips’ writing has been published by The American Prospect, the Yale Journal on Regulation, and the Administrative Law Review, among others. Phillips holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in economics and political science from Arizona State University.
Co-Founder and CEO, Messari
Ryan Selkis is co-founder and CEO of Messari, a leading crypto asset data and research company. Prior to founding Messari, he was an entrepreneur-in-residence at ConsenSys, and was on the founding teams of Digital Currency Group, where he managed the firm’s seed investing activity, and CoinDesk, where he led the company’s restructuring and annual Consensus conferences. He has been an investor and prolific writer in the crypto industry since 2013.
Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law J.W. Verret joined the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University faculty in 2008. In 2013, he took leave for two years to serve as the Chief Economist and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. He received his JD and MA in Public Policy from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, respectively, in 2006. While in law school, Professor Verret served an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance under the guidance of Prof. Lucian Bebchuk.
Professor Verret then served as a law clerk for Vice-Chancellor John W. Noble of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Prior to joining the faculty at Scalia Law, Professor Verret was an associate in the SEC Enforcement Defense Practice Group at Skadden, Arps in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on corporate law topics, including Delaware's Guidance, co-written with Chief Justice Myron T. Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court. His academic work has been featured in the Yale Journal on Regulation, The Business Lawyer, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and the Virginia Law and Business Review. Professor Verret was selected by the Northwestern Law School Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth for a 2009-2010 Searle-Kaufmann Research Fellowship.
Professor Verret is also a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Working Group on Financial Markets, where he regularly briefs Congressional staff, members of Congress, SEC Commissioners and other financial regulatory agencies on financial regulation topics. He also directs the Corporate Federalism Initiative, where he obtains research grants for a network of students and faculty scholars who study the division between states and the federal government as sources of corporate law. Professor Verret has been invited to testify before various House and Senate Committees four times during the financial crisis of 2009 regarding all of the central provisions of the Obama Administration's 2009 financial regulatory reform proposals. For a full list of Professor Verret's C-Span appearances, including testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jwverret.
Professor Verret has been an invited panelist for various television appearances, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Professor Verret has been quoted in various media on financial regulation and corporate law topics, including the New York Times, CNN Money, the CNN Political Ticker, CNBC, ABC News, Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, The American Banker, The American Lawyer, The Huffington Post, CBS.com, and AP News. Professor Verret's op-eds have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Orange County Register, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Verret is also a regular guest contributor to three of the most noted corporate law and financial regulation law blogs: the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation Forum, Deallawyers.com, and The Conglomerate.
Commissioner, United States Securities and Exchange Commission
Hester M. Peirce was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was sworn in on January 11, 2018.
Prior to joining the SEC, Commissioner Peirce conducted research on the regulation of financial markets at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She was a Senior Counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where she advised Ranking Member Richard Shelby and other members of the Committee on securities issues. Commissioner Peirce served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul S. Atkins. She also worked as a Staff Attorney in the SEC’s Division of Investment Management. Commissioner Peirce was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for Judge Roger Andewelt on the Court of Federal Claims.
Commissioner Peirce earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Case Western Reserve University and her JD from Yale Law School.
Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law J.W. Verret joined the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University faculty in 2008. In 2013, he took leave for two years to serve as the Chief Economist and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. He received his JD and MA in Public Policy from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, respectively, in 2006. While in law school, Professor Verret served an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance under the guidance of Prof. Lucian Bebchuk.
Professor Verret then served as a law clerk for Vice-Chancellor John W. Noble of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Prior to joining the faculty at Scalia Law, Professor Verret was an associate in the SEC Enforcement Defense Practice Group at Skadden, Arps in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on corporate law topics, including Delaware's Guidance, co-written with Chief Justice Myron T. Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court. His academic work has been featured in the Yale Journal on Regulation, The Business Lawyer, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and the Virginia Law and Business Review. Professor Verret was selected by the Northwestern Law School Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth for a 2009-2010 Searle-Kaufmann Research Fellowship.
Professor Verret is also a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Working Group on Financial Markets, where he regularly briefs Congressional staff, members of Congress, SEC Commissioners and other financial regulatory agencies on financial regulation topics. He also directs the Corporate Federalism Initiative, where he obtains research grants for a network of students and faculty scholars who study the division between states and the federal government as sources of corporate law. Professor Verret has been invited to testify before various House and Senate Committees four times during the financial crisis of 2009 regarding all of the central provisions of the Obama Administration's 2009 financial regulatory reform proposals. For a full list of Professor Verret's C-Span appearances, including testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jwverret.
Professor Verret has been an invited panelist for various television appearances, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Professor Verret has been quoted in various media on financial regulation and corporate law topics, including the New York Times, CNN Money, the CNN Political Ticker, CNBC, ABC News, Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, The American Banker, The American Lawyer, The Huffington Post, CBS.com, and AP News. Professor Verret's op-eds have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Orange County Register, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Verret is also a regular guest contributor to three of the most noted corporate law and financial regulation law blogs: the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation Forum, Deallawyers.com, and The Conglomerate.
Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Michael Buschbacher is a partner at Boyden Gray PLLC. He represents public and private companies, trade associations, non-profits, and individuals in high-stakes litigation and administrative proceedings, with a particular focus on environmental and energy matters.
In addition to trial-level work, Mr. Buschbacher maintains an active appellate practice, both as merits counsel and as counsel for amici curiae. He has written amicus briefs quoted by the Seventh and Ninth Circuits. And his Supreme Court advocacy has been cited by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and E&E News. Mr. Buschbacher’s commentary on legal issues has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The American Conservative.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Buschbacher served at the U.S. Department of Justice as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. There, he advised senior Department leadership, served as the lead attorney on several lawsuits, and helped draft policy memoranda for the Department on the proper scope and procedure for environmental enforcement. Prior to serving in the government, Mr. Buschbacher was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Buschbacher is a former clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Magistrate Judge Paul R. Cherry of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
Mr. Buschbacher holds a B.A. in Music and Germanic Studies from Indiana University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School.
Partner, Luther Strange & Associates
Annie Donaldson Talley is Partner at Luther Strange and Associates. She recently departed the White House after serving as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President. Over the past four years, she provided outside counsel to the Donald J. Trump for President campaign; helped stand up and manage the White House Counsel’s Office; interfaced with agencies across the federal government; and advised the President of the United States, White House Counsel, Chief of Staff and other senior staff across the Executive Office of the President on a broad range of issues from regulatory reform to executive nominations to the day-to-day issues facing the Administration.
Prior to her White House service, Annie Donaldson Talley counseled clients in the non-profit, for-profit, political, and government sectors, as well as high-profile individuals in private practice at Jones Day and Patton Boggs. She provided strategic counseling to clients structuring their affairs to ensure compliance with a web of state and federal laws and represented clients in complex, multi-faceted investigations, leading teams navigating issues of intense public scrutiny.
Annie Donaldson Talley is also a veteran of three presidential campaigns and served in state government. She holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Alabama and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Harvard Law Review. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama with her husband, Brett.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
JUSTIN SAVAGE is a global co-leader of the firm’s Environmental, Health, and Safety practice and co-leads the Automotive and Mobility sector team, where he is a leading strategist for companies navigating the intersection of complex regulation, high-stakes litigation, and transformative industry change. For nearly three decades, he has led clients through their most consequential environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) disputes and mobility-sector challenges, earning a reputation as both a trusted counselor and a forceful advocate in the courtroom and the boardroom. A core part of Justin’s practice also focuses on regulatory strategy and market entry, advising emerging technology companies, new market entrants, and established industry leaders on launching new products, technologies, and business models. He regularly counsel clients in emerging fields such as robotics and AI on engaging with regulators, anticipating enforcement and compliance risk, and building defensible regulatory strategies that support growth rather than slow it.
Clients praise Justin as “an excellent litigator… strategically clever and creative… attentive, thoughtful and willing to go above and beyond” (Chambers USA 2025). Chambers USA has ranked him for Band 1 for Environment in District of Columbia (2017–2025) and Band 3 for Transportation: Road (Automotive) in USA—Nationwide (2023–2025).
Justin has won some of the most closely watched EH&S and transportation disputes of the past two decades and guided companies through crises where business continuity, brand reputation, and regulatory survival were on the line. His leadership has been repeatedly recognized: he is a three-time Law360 Environmental “MVP” (2018, 2024, 2025) and a Lawdragon “500 Global Leaders in Crisis Management” (2025-2026). He is the first call for companies facing bet-the-company challenges.
Justin’s clients concentrate in heavily regulated industries, including auto and mobility, aviation, chemicals, data centers, energy, mining, and refining. Justin litigates and counsels across the spectrum of U.S. environmental, transportation, and administrative laws, including the Clean Air Act (Title I, mobile sources, and fuels), incident response, RMP, NHTSA, Clean Water Act, TSCA, CSB investigations, APA claims, FOIA litigation, NEPA, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Prior to joining Sidley, Justin served for nearly a decade at the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led teams in several multi-billion dollar enforcement cases. In his career, Justin has regularly taught on a range of environmental and litigation topics. For several years, Justin served as an instructor at the Justice Department’s National Advocacy Center where he taught hundreds of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and other agency lawyers on topics that included trial advocacy and evidence. Since rejoining private practice, Justin has served eight times as a faculty member for the American Law Institute’s Environmental Litigation program. He also lectured on a range of litigation and trial topics for bar associations and organizations, including serving as an instructor for the FAA on trial advocacy.
Kenneth F. Kahn '69 Dean and Martin F. Scheinman Professor of Conflict Resolution, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University
Alexander Colvin, Ph.D. '99, is the Kenneth F. Kahn '69 Dean and the Martin F. Scheinman ’75, MS ‘76 Professor of Conflict Resolution at the ILR School, Cornell University. He is an associate member of the Cornell Law Faculty. His research and teaching focuses on employment dispute resolution, with a particular emphasis on procedures in nonunion workplaces and the impact of the legal environment on organizations. His current research projects include empirical investigations of employment arbitration and a cross-national study of labor and employment law change in the Anglo-American countries. He has published articles in journals such as Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Personnel Psychology, Relations Industrielles, the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, and the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy. He is also co-author (with Harry C. Katz and Thomas A. Kochan) of the textbook An Introduction to Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations, 4th edition (Irwin-McGraw-Hill).
Dean Colvin received his J.D. in 1992 from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. in 1999 from Cornell University. He received the 2003 Outstanding Young Scholar Award from the Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA) and the 2000 Best Dissertation Award from the IRRA for his dissertation entitled “Citizens and Citadels: Dispute Resolution and the Governance of Employment Relations”. Before joining the faculty of the ILR School in 2008, he taught at Penn State University from 1999-2008.
Senior Labor and Employment Counsel, CHRO Association
Roger King is a highly regarded labor relations attorney, whose career spans more than 40 years. Roger recently retired as a partner with Jones Day law firm. He now serves as Senior Labor and Employment counsel for the Association.
Roger specializes in labor and employment, healthcare, collective bargaining, contract administration and representation campaigns. Roger represented the winning side as co-counsel in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case known as Noel Canning, which successfully challenged President Obama’s authority to make recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.
After graduating from Cornell University Law School, he was a Captain and Legal Services Officer in the United States Air Force, on the Staff of United States Senator Robert Taft, Jr. and, subsequently, was appointed as Professional Staff Counsel to the United States Senate Labor Committee.
Roger has testified before both the U.S. Senate and House Labor Committees, is a fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, and serves on the Advocacy Committee of the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Association (ASHHRA) and on the Executive Committee of the Ohio State Bar Association Labor and Employment Law Section Council.
He is a nationally recognized author/speaker on employment matters and has represented employers regarding labor and employment issues both before administrative agencies and in federal and state courts. He has represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the HR Policy Association (HRPA), the National Manufactures Association (NAM), the American Hospital Association (AHA), and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) in federal courts regarding numerous labor law issues.
Other clients Roger has represented include the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Catholic Health Partners, MedStar Health, HCA, Texas Health Resources, Unity Point Health, UHS, Trinity Health, National Beef, General Cable, Orlando Health, ProMedica, Premier Health, Cedars-Sinai, Yale New Haven Health System, McLaren Health Care Corporation, Ohio, California and American Hospital Associations, Bon Secoure Health System, Kaleida Health, Sisters of Levenworth Health System, Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Clarion Clinic, Fisher-Titus Medical Center, Saint Joseph Health System, Benefis Healthcare, Community Health Systems, American Water Works, Macy’s Inc., Verizon and General Motors.
Shareholder, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart
Chris Murray is Co-Chair of the firm’s Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Practice Group. In this role, he assists attorneys throughout the firm and clients nationwide to create, roll out, and enforce effective employment arbitration agreements and other ADR programs. Mr. Murray has extensive experience with class/collective action waivers in employment arbitration. Mr. Murray was part of the Ogletree team that successfully defended the use of such waivers in the Fifth Circuit’s landmark decision in D.R. Horton, Inc. v. N.L.R.B. Since then, he has successfully defended the enforceability of class action waivers in numerous subsequent cases and submitted an amicus brief on the subject on behalf of several major employers’ associations in the Supreme Court’s Murphy Oil case. Mr. Murray assists clients and the Firm’s attorneys to draft or revise arbitration programs focused on a client’s specific needs and goals and in light of changing law and evolving best practices.
Director of Litigation, Center for Biological Diversity
Eric Glitzenstein is presently the Director of Litigation at the Center for Biological Diversity, a national conservation organization dedicated to preventing human-caused extinctions and protecting life on Earth. The Center has more than 50 attorneys nationwide who litigate in federal and state courts on a wide variety of wildlife protection and other environmental issues. Mr. Glitzenstein oversees and coordinates the Center’s litigation of cases brought under the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Administrative Procedure Act, and many other statutes on which the Center’s attorneys rely to further the protection of wildlife and imperiled ecosystems. Mr. Glitzenstein’s position entails, among other responsibilities, mentoring the Center’s new attorneys on substantive wildlife law and litigation strategy, coordinating the organization’s litigation efforts, and providing advice to all of the attorneys and other staff about litigation-related matters.
Prior to working with the Center, Mr. Glitzenstein was the co-founder (with Professor Katherine Meyer) and Managing Partner of the D.C.-based firm Meyer & Glitzenstein, one of the nation’s leading public-interest law firms. On behalf of both national and grassroots non-profit organizations, the firm specialized in the protection of wildlife and captive animals, environmental and natural resource conservation, and open government cases, among other issues. In addition to managing the firm and mentoring the firm’s new attorneys, Mr. Glitzenstein was lead counsel in many wildlife cases in federal courts throughout the country, including in various U.S. Courts of Appeals and in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lawsuits handled by Mr. Glitzenstein while with Meyer & Glitzenstein resulted in: compelling the federal government to list hundreds of animals and plants as endangered or threatened under the ESA; securing ESA protections for the Canada lynx and its critical habitat throughout the contiguous U.S.; the creation of new sanctuaries and refuges for the endangered Florida manatee; a strengthened Recovery Plan for the threatened grizzly bear; new safeguards for critically imperiled right whales in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; limitations on environmentally damaging limestone mining in the Everglades; new protections for endangered bats at risk from industrial wind power; curbs on destructive off-road vehicle use in the Big Cypress National Preserve; the halting of gray whale hunting off the coast of Washington; the end of grizzly bear hunting in Montana; and the invalidation of regulations authorizing long-term permits for the incidental killing and harming of bald and golden eagles.
Prior to co-founding Meyer & Glitzenstein in 1993, Mr. Glitzenstein was a staff attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group for seven years. In that capacity, he worked on a wide variety of public-interest issues, including open government, nuclear safety, and environmental and natural resource protection. He argued two cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, one of which established that federal prisoners have a right to obtain access to their presentence investigatory reports under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He also succeeded in obtaining rulings requiring the strengthening of regulations for valuing and restoring natural resources damaged by oil and other toxic spills; requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue new requirements for the training of workers in nuclear power plants; precluding the National Archives from deferring to President Nixon’s claims of executive privilege in connection with public access to his Presidential records; requiring the Food and Drug Administration to ban the sale of unpasteurized milk; holding that expert panels of the National Academy of Sciences must comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act; and requiring the promulgation by the Environmental Protection Agency of stricter effluent standards under the Clean Water Act for dozens of polluting industries. While at Public Citizen, but not as part of his official work, Mr. Glitzenstein also secured a ruling granting political asylum to a refugee from El Salvador.
Mr. Gitzenstein is a 1978 graduate of Johns Hopkins University and a 1981 graduate (magna cum laude) of the Georgetown University Law Center. Following graduation from law school, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Thomas Flannery of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Mr. Glitzenstein has testified before Congressional committees on a wide variety of topics, including the proper implementation of the ESA, the licensing of nuclear power plants, access to Presidential and other government records, the functioning of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the impacts of wind power projects on wildlife, and the recovery of natural resources damages resulting from oil and other toxic waste spills.
For twelve years, Mr. Glitzenstein served on the Board of Directors of Defenders of Wildlife, and was also Chair of that organization’s litigation committee. He has also served on the boards of the Center for Native Ecosystems and the Wildlife Advocacy Project. He was Vice Chairman of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Animal Law, as well as the ABA’s Committee on Open Government and Right to Privacy.
Mr. Glitzenstein has won a number of awards for his public interest advocacy, including a Manatee Hero Award (awarded by Save the Manatee Club); the Kerry Ryberg Award for Environmental Activism (awarded at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference); a Pegasus Foundation award (for running a leading public-interest law firm); and a Playboy Foundation First Amendment Award (for open government victories on behalf of federal prisoners and in furthering access to President Nixon’s records).
Vice President of Law & Policy, Property and Environment Research Center
Jonathan Wood is vice president of law and policy at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). An attorney, Jonathan has litigated environmental and property-rights cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, federal and state appellate courts, and trial courts across the country. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, Reason, and other outlets. And his research has been published in journals such as Environmental Law Reporter, Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Pace Environmental Law Review, and California Western Law Review.
Prior to coming to PERC, Jonathan was a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he litigated cases concerning the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and other federal environmental laws. He was co-counsel for forest landowners in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that private land could not be arbitrarily regulated as critical habitat under the ESA. He also led a successful effort to reform regulation of threatened species to better align the incentives of private landowners with the interests of rare species.
Jonathan has testified before several congressional committees on wildlife conservation and endangered species topics. He has also appeared on national television and radio, including NPR’s All Things Considered, C-Span’s Washington Journal, Stossel, Fox News, and Hill.TV.
Jonathan has a law degree from the New York University School of Law, a masters degree in economic policy from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Texas. He is on the executive committee for the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Practice Group and a steering committee member for the Environmental Law Institute’s Emerging Leaders Initiative.
Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy; Director, Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, Penn Law
Claire Finkelstein’s current research addresses national security law and policy, with a focus on ethical and rule of law issues that arise in that arena. In 2012, Professor Finkelstein founded Penn Law’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), a non-partisan interdisciplinary institute that seeks to promote the rule of law in modern day conflict, warfare, and national security. In 2019, she was named Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). An expert in the law of armed conflict, military ethics, and national security law, she is a co-editor (with Jens David Ohlin) of The Oxford Series in Ethics, National Security, and the Rule of Law, and a volume editor of its four titles thus far: Targeted Killings: Law & Morality in an Asymmetrical World (Oxford University Press, 2012); Cyber War: Law and Ethics for Virtual Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 2015); Weighing Lives in War (Oxford University Press, 2017); and Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority (Oxford University Press, 2018). Professor Finkelstein has briefed Pentagon officials, U.S. Senate staff, and JAG Corps members on various issues in national security law and practice. She is a frequent radio, broadcast, and print commentator and has published op-eds in The New York Times and The Hill. Her prior scholarly work focuses on criminal law theory, moral and political philosophy, jurisprudence, and rational choice theory. She is also the editor of Hobbes on Law (Ashgate Publishing, 2005) and is currently completing a book called Contractarian Legal Theory.
Founder and Executive Director, National Security Institute; Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jamil N. Jaffer is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University where he also serves as an Assistant Professor of Law, Director of the National Security Law and Policy Program, and Director of the Cyber, Intelligence, and National Security LLM Program. Jamil also teaches classes on counterterrorism, intelligence, surveillance, cybersecurity, and other national security matters, as well as a summer course held abroad with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Jamil is also affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and previously served as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2016 to 2019.
Jamil is also a Venture Partner with Paladin Capital Group, where he assists the firm with investments across the full range of its themes and theses, including a focus on dual-use national security technologies. Jamil also serves on the board of directors of RangeForce, a cybersecurity training and readiness platform startup and Tozny, a digital identity startup, and on the advisory boards of U.S. Strategic Metals, North America’s largest primary producer of cobalt, a critical mineral used in EV batteries, aerospace, and other national security applications; and Constella Intelligence, a deep and dark web intelligence startup. Jamil also serves as an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm and Duco, a technology platform startup that connects corporations with geopolitical and international business experts. Jamil is also the managing director of Trigraph Caveat Capital, a private investment vehicle.
Among other things, Jamil currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Board of Advisors for the Global Cyber Alliance, and the Advisory Board of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Tech Innovation, the Executive Committee of the Reagan Institute Strategy Group. Jamil is also a Fellow at the Academy for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Studies, an advisor to the Concordia Summit, and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Intelligence Policy, the Board of Directors of Speech First, and the Executive Committee of the International Law and National Security Practice Group of the Federalist Society.
Immediately prior to his current positions, from 2015-2021, Jamil served as a senior business leader at IronNet Cybersecurity, helping take the company from a bootstrapped first-year technology products startup through two rounds of venture capital fundraising, growing from 40 employees to over 300, and through its listing on New York Stock Exchange. In his role as IronNet's Senior Vice President for Strategy, Partnerships & Corporate Development, Jamil worked directly for the co-CEOs of the company, Gen (ret.) Keith B. Alexander, the former Director of the National Security Agency and Founding Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, and Bill Welch, the former COO of Zscaler and Duo; in that role, Jamil led all of the company’s strategic and technology partnership efforts, including developing go-to-market and technology integration plans with some of the largest cloud platforms and cybersecurity companies in the market, evaluating potential acquisition targets, and developing overall corporate strategy and thought leadership around collective security and collaborative defense in the cyber arena.
Prior to his time at IronNet, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor under Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN), where he worked on key national security and foreign policy issues, including leading the drafting of the proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS in 2014 and 2015, the AUMF against Syria in 2013, and revisions to the 9/11 AUMF against al Qaeda. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and two sanctions laws against Russia for its first intervention in Ukraine.
Prior to joining SFRC, Jamil served as Senior Counsel to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) where he led the committee’s oversight of NSA surveillance, NRO intelligence issues, and NGA analytic and collection matters, as well as intelligence community-wide counterterrorism issues. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the nation’s first cyber threat intelligence sharing legislation that was signed into law in 2015.
In the Bush Administration, Jamil served in the White House as an Associate Counsel to the President, handling Defense Department, State Department, and intelligence community matters, and serving as one of the White House Counsel’s primary representatives to the National Security Council Deputies Committee.
Prior to the White House, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Justice Department’s National Security Division as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, where he focused on counterterrorism and intelligence matters. At NSD, Jamil helped lead the division’s work on In re: Directives, the first ever two-party litigated matter in the FISA Court and the second case before the FISA Court of Review in its 30-year history. Jamil also led NSD’s efforts on the President’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), including the drafting of NSPD-54/HSPD-23, and related classified matters, and advised the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command’s predecessor organization, the Joint Function Component Command for Network Warfare (JFCC-NW), on matters related to cyber intelligence collection and offensive cyber activities. For his work on these matters, Jamil was awarded the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Special Initiative and was among the group of lawyers awarded the Director of National Intelligence’s 2008 Legal Award (Team of the Year – Cyber Legal).
Jamil also served in other positions in the Justice Department, including in the Office of Legal Policy, where he worked on the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Jamil also served as a lawyer in private practice at Kellogg Huber, a Washington, DC-based litigation boutique, as a policy advisor to Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and as a staff member or senior advisor on a number of political campaigns, including two presidential campaigns and a presidential transition team. While in law school, Jamil was a member of the University of Chicago Law Review, managing editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law, and National Symposium Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Following law school, Jamil served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, later in his career, as a law clerk to then-Judge Neil M. Gorsuch when he first joined the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit as well as a law clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch when he joined the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jamil has published multiple op-eds and academic articles on national security, foreign policy, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, encryption, and intelligence matters, and is the co-author of a book chapter with former NSA Director Gen. (Ret.) Keith B. Alexander on national security and the press in National Security, Leaks, and the Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On (2021) and a book chapter with former CIA Director Gen. (ret.) Mike Hayden on ISIS, al Qaeda, and other international terrorist groups in Choosing to Lead: American Foreign Policy for a Disordered World (2015). Jamil has also written book chapters on cybersecurity and surveillance, as well as op-eds and policy papers with former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen, and Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), among others.
Jamil has previously taught graduate-level courses in intelligence law and policy at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and the National Intelligence University, served an outside advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and has recently testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on China, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and other national security matters. Jamil has also recently appeared on a range of national television and radio outlets including CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, Bloomberg, PBS, Voice of America, and National Public Radio, and in various print and online publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post on a range of national security matters including cybersecurity, counterterrorism, surveillance, encryption, privacy, and foreign policy issues.
Jamil holds degrees from UCLA (BA, cum laude), the University of Chicago Law School (JD, with honors), and the United States Naval War College (MA, with distinction).
Senior Partner (Ret.), Arnold & Porter LLP
Ramon Marks is a retired Arnold & Porter partner who specialized in international law. He is Vice Chair of Business Executives for National Security (BENS) and a frequent contributor to The National Interest where he writes on national security issues.
Senior Director of CCTI and Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Mark Montgomery serves as senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, where he leads FDD’s efforts to advance U.S. prosperity and security through technology innovation while countering cyber threats that seek to diminish them. Mark also directs CSC 2.0, an initiative that works to implement the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, where he served as executive director. Previously, Mark served as policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee under the leadership of Senator John S. McCain, coordinating policy efforts on national security strategy, capabilities and requirements, and cyber policy.
Mark served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer, retiring as a rear admiral in 2017. His flag officer assignments included director of operations (J3) at U. S. Pacific Command; commander of Carrier Strike Group 5, embarked on the USS George Washington, stationed in Japan; and deputy director for plans, policy and strategy (J5) at U. S. European Command. He was assigned to the National Security Council from 1998 to 2000, serving as director for transnational threats. Mark has graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oxford and completed the U.S. Navy’s nuclear power training program.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Chief Legal Officer, Castle Island Ventures
Gus Coldebella is the Chief Legal Officer of Castle Island Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investing in blockchain technology, where he handles legal, regulatory, policy, and compliance matters for the firm.
Over a career spanning private practice, government, and technology, he has served as a law firm partner, prosecutor, senior federal official, general counsel, and venture capital partner. He previously served as acting general counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration, leading a team of 1,700 lawyers, and focusing on all major security issues confronting the nation. His private-sector leadership roles have included chief legal officer of Circle; general counsel of Paradigm; partner at True Ventures; and partner in Goodwin Procter’s litigation and investigations practice.
Coldebella holds a J.D. from Cornell Law School and a B.A. from Colgate University, where he later served as vice chair of the Board of Trustees and president of the Alumni Council. He teaches “Artificial Intelligence: Law and Policy” at Boston College Law School.
Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Eric Kadel is engaged in a wide variety of corporate, transactional and regulatory matters. He is a member of the Firm’s Corporate and Finance, Financial Services, Investment Management, Alternative Investment Management, Cybersecurity, and Commodities, Futures and Derivatives Groups. With regard to financings, Mr. Kadel regularly represents participants in capital markets transactions, and dealers and end users in connection with structuring and documenting a wide variety of swaps and other derivatives, including equity, credit default and commodity swaps, options and forwards. Mr. Kadel’s work in the investment management area includes advising public and private investment companies and investment advisers on a wide variety of transactional, regulatory, compliance and other matters, including registration and regulation. Mr. Kadel also advises clients of the Firm regarding developments in the laws regulating the financial services industry and on cybersecurity issues. Mr. Kadel is currently an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School.
In addition, Mr. Kadel is one of the principal partners in the Firm’s International Trade and Investment practice. He counsels and represents clients on questions about U.S. economic sanctions, including those administered by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), United States antiboycott requirements under the Export Administration Regulations administered and enforced by the Commerce Department’s Office of Antiboycott Compliance within the Bureau of Industry and Security, Bank Secrecy Act/anti‐money laundering laws and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). Mr. Kadel’s practice includes analysis of proposed transactions and business relationships; due diligence and design and review of compliance procedures and strategies; and internal investigations, voluntary disclosures and government enforcement actions. Mr. Kadel also regularly advises clients regarding questions arising under Exon-Florio and the transaction review process administered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (“CFIUS”), and has represented clients before CFIUS on many national security reviews.
Senior Adviser, Crito Capital
Dr. Oonagh McDonald, CBE is currently a senior adviser to Crito Capital, a private placement company based in New York.
A former British Member of Parliament, she became an international expert in financial regulation, after losing her seat in the General Election, 1987. She worked with the Asian Development Bank, advising regulatory authorities in a number of countries, including Sri Lanka and Indonesia. More recently, she has worked with USAID in Ukraine and Moldova. She has served as a non-executive director on the board of both financial services companies and regulatory authorities. In 1998, she was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire), a national honor by the Queen for her work in financial regulation.
She is the author of numerous articles and seven books, of which the most recent are: “Holding bankers to account: A decade of market manipulation, regulatory failures and regulatory reforms” (Manchester University Press, 2019) and “Cryptocurrencies: Money, Trust and Regulation” (Agenda Publishing, 2021).
K2 Integrity, Global Co-Managing Partner and Chief Strategy Officer
The Honorable Juan Zarate is the global co-managing partner and chief strategy officer for the global consulting firm, K2 Integrity. He is also the co-founder and Chair of the Board of Consilient, an innovative new fintech.
He is the chairman and co-founder of the Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies(CSIS), and a senior fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. He was a visiting lecturer in law at the Harvard Law School for eight years and is a published author, including his books “Treasury’s War” (2013) and “Forging Democracy” (1994).
Mr. Zarate sits on the boards of various organizations, including Northwestern Mutual, Cambridge Quantum Computing North America Holdings, Guardian Space Technologies Systems, and the Director’s Advisory Board for the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Since 2014, Mr. Zarate has served as an independent advisor to Coinbase, the largest virtual asset service provider in the United States. With two appointments by Pope Francis,Mr. Zarate sat on the board of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority for over five years; the Boston Dynamics board for over three years; and for seven years, he was the U.S. advisor on HSBC’s Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee (overseeing remediation of the bank’s anti-money laundering system and adherence with the U.S.DOJ deferred prosecution agreement) and remains an advisor to HSBC’s Group Risk Committee.
Mr. Zarate served as the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism (“counterterrorism czar”) from 2005 to 2009, where he was responsible for developing and implementing the U.S. counterterrorism strategy and policies related to transnational security threats, including hostage-taking, piracy, anti-money laundering, kleptocracy, transnational organized crime, and international energy infrastructure protection,. He was responsible for conceiving and leading major initiatives in the post 9/11 period, including the establishment of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT).
He was the first ever assistant secretary of the treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes. In this role, he led the post-9/11 anti-money laundering and sanctions regime expansion in the United States; helped develop the international standards for AML/CFT and proliferation finance; supervised the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the Treasury’s Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture (TEOAF); drove the innovative use of the Treasury’s national security–related powers and ultimately the establishment of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). He has also led some of the largest asset recovery ventures in history, including the return of over $3 billion in Iraqi assets.
Mr. Zarate is a former federal terrorism prosecutor, prior to 9/11, serving on the prosecution teams in the East Africa bombings and USS Cole cases, among others. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School, and a Rotary Fellow at the Universidad de Salamanca. At Harvard College, he won the John P. Reardon Award, as the best male student athlete.
Senior Counsel and Director of Global Regulatory Matters, ConsenSys Software
Bill Hughes is senior counsel and director of global regulatory matters for ConsenSys Software, the leading Ethereum blockchain software company. Bill focuses on the diverse and ever evolving crypto global regulatory landscape, and the legal and public policy issues with which ConsenSys and the broader crypto ecosystem is grappling.
Bill joined ConsenSys after serving as an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, where he managed, among other things, the Department’s work on prospective regulations, legislative proposals, and policies across a broad spectrum of legal and operational issues. He worked closely with the White House and other federal agencies on regulatory and policy initiatives and coordinated DOJ’s law enforcement response to COVID-19-related consumer fraud and money laundering. Bill also has served at the White House, where he oversaw various operational components. Bill began his career by clerking for a federal judge in New York and litigating with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Bill received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law and his BA from Vanderbilt University.
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