I am excited to announce I am joining Centrifuge as General Counsel!

First, a word about my background, I am a US lawyer with a mixed transactional and regulatory legal expertise. I have worked in the US, Europe and Asia and across the TradFi and crypto spaces.

In private practice, I was with Baker & McKenzie in Moscow and Chicago offices working on project finance, securitizations and syndicated lending deals. I then moved in-house to Euroclear Bank in Brussels and Hong Kong working on a very large number and range of bond deals. From Euroclear, I went to Singapore Exchange to head a new regulatory unit focusing on derivatives and commodities futures.

I then joined CME Group as their Asia regulatory counsel and was drawn into the crypto world with the launch of the CME BTC futures in 2017. Most recently before joining Centrifuge, I have been with Block.One in Hong Kong working on the recently launched Gibraltar-regulated CEX Bullish.

This year at Centrifuge, my focus is on the formalization of the legal structures we use for our pool transactions. Having mature and robust legal structures is important for the DeFi world for a number of reasons:

• A solid legal foundation protects investors enhancing the appeal and value of our pools
• Formalized legal structures are standard practice in the TradFi world so this is a prerequisite to attracting TradFi players into DeFi
• Sound legal documentation for our deals protects investors, issuers and us from potential litigation claims
• Clear legal terminology and language provides a consistent and coherent story for discussions with regulators and third party service providers such as custodians and banks

This is ongoing work with input still to be gathered from key stakeholders. I will keep you updated as this progresses.