Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Berlau is a senior fellow and Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work focuses on how public policy affects access to capital, entrepreneurship, and investments made by the public and business community alike. In recent years, he has studied the consequences of financial reform efforts passed by Congress like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis including the Dodd-Frank Act, the placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, and the rise of cryptocurrency.
He is also the author of the book George Washington: Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World. The book received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other forums, and was endorsed by eminent historians and scholars such as Richard Brookhiser, Amity Shlaes, and Craig Shirley.
Berlau is a contributing writer for Forbes. His work has been published and cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, National Journal, National Review, American Spectator, Reason Magazine, and more. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including CNBC’s “The Call,” “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell,” Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and Fox Business’ “Cavuto.”
He has testified on the impact of financial regulation before the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A recognized expert on the phenomenon of crowdfunding, Berlau has spoken at prominent conferences such as South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the FinTech Global Expo in San Diego, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit in San Francisco and the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) Summit in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the widely cited paper “Declaration of Crowdfunding Independence: Finance of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
Berlau is an award-winning financial and political journalist. He served as Washington correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily and as a staff writer for Insight magazine, published by The Washington Times. In 2002, he received the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism from Washington’s National Press Club. He was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2003. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1994 with degrees in journalism and economics.
Managing Partner, Deaton Law Firm
John Deaton, Managing Partner of the Deaton Law Firm, founded his law practice in 2006. Prior to establishing DLF, John worked for a national plaintiffs’ firm, specializing in asbestos litigation, products liability, toxic torts, and personal injury. John also served as one of the firm’s principal trial attorneys in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. John tried cases against national defense lawyers, litigation firms, and high profile corporations. He earned a reputation as an aggressive but fair trial advocate.
Prior to his work as a plaintiffs’ attorney, John joined the United States Marine Corp while in law school. In 1994, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. John served as a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney for seven years of active duty. He tried dozens of jury trials to verdict throughout his career. As a direct result of his efforts, John was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and was selected to the rank of Major.
John attended law school at the New England School of Law and graduated Cum Laude in 1995. At New England School of Law, John received the American Jurisprudence Award for Clinical Evidence and was selected for the law school’s National Mock Trial Team, an honor awarded to few. John graduated Magna Cum Laude from Eastern Michigan University in 1989.
University Professor and Clayton N. Little Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law
Professor Goforth specializes in business associations and securities regulation, and she has become a leading expert on the regulation of cryptoassets and transactions. West Academic published her new textbook, Regulation of Cryptotransactions, in March 2020. To the best of her knowledge, this was the first comprehensive textbook on the subject. She writes and comments frequently on crypto, including serving as an expert commentator for CoinTelegraph, with her posts regularly receiving thousands of views. She is also on the board of advisors to Honeycomb Digital Investments.
In 1999, she was elected to the prestigious American Law Institute, which welcomes distinguished federal and state judges, lawyers, and law professors. She has also been an official observer to a Uniform Law Commission drafting committee, and serves as the Arkansas Liaison to the Corporate Laws Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. She is also a member of the Academic Faculty Network at the Sam M. Walton College of Business Blockchain Center of Excellence.
Prof. Goforth is a University Professor and the Clayton N. Little Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She is a former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a former Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor of Law.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
President, Committee for Justice
Curt Levey is President of the Committee For Justice, an organization devoted to advancing constitutionally limited government and individual liberty. He is a veteran of Supreme Court and other judicial confirmation battles and serves on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Civil Rights Practice Group.
After graduating Harvard Law School with honors and clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Mr. Levey served as Director of Legal & Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR). There he worked on landmark Supreme Court cases, including the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and the successful constitutional challenge to the Violence Against Women Act. After CIR, Mr. Levey headed the Title IX policy group at the U.S. Department of Education.
Before attending law school, Mr. Levey earned an M.S. and B.A. in computer science from Brown University and worked in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He invented a new type of AI technology, for which he wrote a successful patent application.
Partner, Baker Hostetler LLP
David Rivkin is a member of the firm's litigation, international and environmental teams and is co-leader of the firm's national appellate practice. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high-profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, David draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), anti-boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues.
David has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op-eds, book reviews and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV and radio shows including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR and PBS.
Partner, BakerHostetler, Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
Andrew Grossman leads BakerHostetler’s Appellate and Major Motion team. He has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, nearly all the federal courts of appeals, as well as some state appellate courts, litigating high-profile and complex commercial, administrative and constitutional issues.
Andrew works with practice groups across BakerHostetler to identify and tackle complex issues, advise on administrative law and strategy, tee up issues for appeal and tackle appeals. He has developed and implemented litigation and administrative strategies for clients in several fields and industries.
In addition to his practice, Andrew advises members of Congress on matters of constitutional and administrative law, having testified more than a dozen times before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. He has been a frequent legal commentator on radio and television, having appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and its affiliates, CBN and elsewhere. His legal commentary has also appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and many others.
Andrew is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Buckeye Institute, an Adjunct Fellow the Manhattan Institute and a member of the leadership of the Federalist Society. He previously served as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Berlau is a senior fellow and Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work focuses on how public policy affects access to capital, entrepreneurship, and investments made by the public and business community alike. In recent years, he has studied the consequences of financial reform efforts passed by Congress like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis including the Dodd-Frank Act, the placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, and the rise of cryptocurrency.
He is also the author of the book George Washington: Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World. The book received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other forums, and was endorsed by eminent historians and scholars such as Richard Brookhiser, Amity Shlaes, and Craig Shirley.
Berlau is a contributing writer for Forbes. His work has been published and cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, National Journal, National Review, American Spectator, Reason Magazine, and more. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including CNBC’s “The Call,” “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell,” Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and Fox Business’ “Cavuto.”
He has testified on the impact of financial regulation before the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A recognized expert on the phenomenon of crowdfunding, Berlau has spoken at prominent conferences such as South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the FinTech Global Expo in San Diego, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit in San Francisco and the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) Summit in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the widely cited paper “Declaration of Crowdfunding Independence: Finance of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
Berlau is an award-winning financial and political journalist. He served as Washington correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily and as a staff writer for Insight magazine, published by The Washington Times. In 2002, he received the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism from Washington’s National Press Club. He was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2003. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1994 with degrees in journalism and economics.
Managing Partner, Deaton Law Firm
John Deaton, Managing Partner of the Deaton Law Firm, founded his law practice in 2006. Prior to establishing DLF, John worked for a national plaintiffs’ firm, specializing in asbestos litigation, products liability, toxic torts, and personal injury. John also served as one of the firm’s principal trial attorneys in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. John tried cases against national defense lawyers, litigation firms, and high profile corporations. He earned a reputation as an aggressive but fair trial advocate.
Prior to his work as a plaintiffs’ attorney, John joined the United States Marine Corp while in law school. In 1994, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. John served as a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney for seven years of active duty. He tried dozens of jury trials to verdict throughout his career. As a direct result of his efforts, John was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and was selected to the rank of Major.
John attended law school at the New England School of Law and graduated Cum Laude in 1995. At New England School of Law, John received the American Jurisprudence Award for Clinical Evidence and was selected for the law school’s National Mock Trial Team, an honor awarded to few. John graduated Magna Cum Laude from Eastern Michigan University in 1989.
University Professor and Clayton N. Little Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law
Professor Goforth specializes in business associations and securities regulation, and she has become a leading expert on the regulation of cryptoassets and transactions. West Academic published her new textbook, Regulation of Cryptotransactions, in March 2020. To the best of her knowledge, this was the first comprehensive textbook on the subject. She writes and comments frequently on crypto, including serving as an expert commentator for CoinTelegraph, with her posts regularly receiving thousands of views. She is also on the board of advisors to Honeycomb Digital Investments.
In 1999, she was elected to the prestigious American Law Institute, which welcomes distinguished federal and state judges, lawyers, and law professors. She has also been an official observer to a Uniform Law Commission drafting committee, and serves as the Arkansas Liaison to the Corporate Laws Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. She is also a member of the Academic Faculty Network at the Sam M. Walton College of Business Blockchain Center of Excellence.
Prof. Goforth is a University Professor and the Clayton N. Little Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She is a former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a former Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor of Law.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
President, Committee for Justice
Curt Levey is President of the Committee For Justice, an organization devoted to advancing constitutionally limited government and individual liberty. He is a veteran of Supreme Court and other judicial confirmation battles and serves on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Civil Rights Practice Group.
After graduating Harvard Law School with honors and clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Mr. Levey served as Director of Legal & Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR). There he worked on landmark Supreme Court cases, including the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and the successful constitutional challenge to the Violence Against Women Act. After CIR, Mr. Levey headed the Title IX policy group at the U.S. Department of Education.
Before attending law school, Mr. Levey earned an M.S. and B.A. in computer science from Brown University and worked in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He invented a new type of AI technology, for which he wrote a successful patent application.
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