Center for Assurance Research and Engineering

Group: Event Speakers RRI

The Race to Regulate the Internet: Should States or the Federal Government Set the Rules for Website Content, Child Protection and Personal Data Control

Josh Divine

Join CARE Mailing List

Groups: Event Speakers RRI

Josh Divine is Solicitor General of Missouri, where he oversees the office’s appellate and special litigation divisions. Before serving as Solicitor General, Mr. Divine was Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, where he oversaw all legal issues, managed matters related to the Judiciary Committee, and developed tech policy. Mr. Divine clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Thomas and on the Eleventh Circuit for Judge William Pryor. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Northern Colorado. His recent legal scholarship has appeared in the Virginia Law Review and the Hastings Law Journal.

Thomas P. Vartanian

Join CARE Mailing List

Groups: CARE Senior Fellows, Event Speakers RRI, Event Speakers TGD

Thomas P. Vartanian is an author, attorney, financial services advisor, board mentor, and expert witness. Between 1983 and 2018, he chaired the Financial Institution’s practices at two international law firms, Dechert LLP and Fried Frank LLP, through four financial crises. Both as a regulator and private practitioner, he has represented parties in 30 of the 50 largest financial institution failures in American history.

Mr. Vartanian served in the Reagan Administration during the S&L crisis as General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the FSLIC. Prior to that, he served in the Carter Administration in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as Special Assistant to the Chief Counsel. Since departing government service, Mr. Vartanian has informally advised several Presidential Administrations on financial services issues.

Mr. Vartanian was Chairman of the American Bar Association’s Cyberspace Law Committee between 1998 and 2002, where he chaired an international task force of lawyers from twenty countries which released a seminal report in London in 2000 on the novel issues created by doing business in Cyberspace.

Mr. Vartanian is a futurist and expert in financial technology, which has been described by clients in Chambers as “one of the best financial services lawyers in America.”

He has authored more than four hundred articles and eight books, including his latest book, The Unhackable Internet, How Rebuilding Cyberspace Can Create Real Security and Prevent Financial Collapse, which warns of the dangers created by an insecure internet. His previous book, 200 Years of American Financial Panics: Crashes, Recessions, Depressions, and the Technology That Will Change It All, chronicles the country’s tumultuous financial history and the impact that technology will have in the future.

He is a frequent lecturer and media commentator on the financial services industry, having appeared on, among others, Bloomberg TV, CNN, Fox, Fox Business, and many radio shows. He has also taught financial services, and digital commerce law at Georgetown Law School, George Washington Law School, and Boston University School of Law, and has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School.

In 2008, Mr. Vartanian was named “Washingtonian of the Year” based on his use of music and sports to raise money for charities in the D.C. metropolitan area. As a musician, he appeared in the first production in the United States in 1970 of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. His classic rock band, The Johnny Esquire Band, has helped raise approximately $5,000,000 for charities in the Washington D.C. area over the last twenty years. Mr. Vartanian also founded and plays for the Washington All Stars, a senior baseball team that has raised nearly $600,000 for Special Olympics.

Robert Coles

Join CARE Mailing List

Groups: CARE Senior Fellows, Event Speakers RRI

Robert holds a portfolio of roles: he is the Head of Security Strategy at DS Smith PLC, he holds a number of board positions including Chair of Crossword Consulting Ltd Board, Non-Executive Director of Crossword Cybersecurity PLC, Chair of the Board at Think Cyber Ltd and advisor to the Government of Singapore Ministry of Health. He is also a Governor/Trustee and Audit Committee Member at the University of Brighton.  Robert has over 35 years of audit, risk and security experience and has held a number of senior leadership positions, including CISO for the NHS and health & care system, GSK, National Grid, and Merrill Lynch and Head of InfoSec at Royal Bank of Scotland, and he was a partner at KPMG.

Robert is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Assurance Research and Engineering at George Mason University, Washington DC. He is also an Visiting Professor at UCL. He was awarded a PhD in psychology by the University of Leeds for his work on the perceptions of information and IT risk and has published and presented on this and other topics. He continues to undertake research in these areas. He was also awarded an MBA from Manchester Business School.