Group: Event Speakers TGD

Michele Alt specializes in applications, business plan development, and regulatory strategy & engagement.

Michele helps banks and fintechs navigate the complicated regulatory issues that are critical to their growth and sustainability. She’s particularly focused on helping fintechs develop their U.S. bank licensing strategies and draft their U.S. business plans. Michele joined Klaros from Promontory Financial Group, where she led a number of major bank licensing efforts and assisted numerous major banking organizations on a range of Dodd-Frank and Volcker Rule interpretive and implementation matters. Before joining Promontory, Michele spent 22 years in the Law Department of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. During the financial crisis and in the years immediately following, Michele was a leader in the Law Department’s Legislative and Regulatory Activities section, heading up numerous interagency rulemakings arising out of the Dodd-Frank legislation and serving as the agency’s legal point person on federal preemption issues. Michele also served as OCC’s district counsel in Chicago, leading a team of financial lawyers handling licensing and enforcement matters. She began her career as a judicial clerk on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. 

She received her BA from the University of Michigan and her JD from Wayne State University, where she was an editor of the law review.

Greg Baer is the President and Chief Executive Officer at the Bank Policy Institute. Previously, he served as President of The Clearing House Association and Executive Vice President and General Counsel of The Clearing House Payments Company, the largest private sector payments operator in the United States.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, Mr. Baer was Managing Director and Head of Regulatory Policy at JPMorgan Chase. He previously served as General Counsel for Corporate and Regulatory Law at JPMorgan Chase, supervising the company’s legal work with respect to financial reporting, global regulatory affairs, intellectual property, private equity and corporate M&A, and data protection and privacy.

Mr. Baer previously served as Deputy General Counsel for Corporate Law at Bank of America, and as a partner and co-head of the financial institutions group at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Baer served as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, after serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary. Prior to working for the Treasury Department, Mr. Baer was managing senior counsel at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Mr. Baer received his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1987, and served as managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. He received his A.B. with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1984.

Mr. Baer also serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School. He currently serves on the board of Honors Carolina, and previously served on the boards of Enterprise Community Partners, the DC College Access Program, and the Appleseed Foundation. He is also the author of two books: The Great Mutual Fund Trap (Random House, 2002) and Life: The Odds (And How to Improve Them) (Penguin-Putnam, 2003).

Elizabeth McCaul is a former member of the Supervisory Board of the ECB.

Her areas of interest include supervisory strategy, risk, capital, internal governance, and consistency and quality across European banking supervision. She focuses on prudential implications in dynamic areas such as financial stability, climate change, fintech and anti-money laundering.

Ms. McCaul joined the New York State Banking Department as First Deputy in 1995 and served as New York Superintendent of Banks from 1997-2003. She was elected Chair of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, and served as a member of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, on the Joint Forum on Financial Conglomerates, and as an instructor for the Financial Stability Institute at the Bank for International Settlements.

Before joining the ECB, she worked for Promontory Financial Group, where she founded the New York office as Partner-in-Charge, before serving as CEO and Chair of Europe, and Global Head of Strategy.

For the first decade of her career she was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.

Robert H. Ledig is Managing Director of the Financial Technology & Cybersecurity Center. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Assurance Research and Engineering at George Mason University’s College of Engineering and Computing. He is an Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason Univerity’s (GMU’s) Scalia Law School.

He has extensive experience in banking and financial services regulation and related financial technology, privacy and information security, corporate, securities, administrative law, and litigation matters. He has written and spoken widely on financial services issues.

He is an editor and author of a number of books, including: The Volcker Rule: Commentary and Analysis (Thomson Reuters 2014), Dechert LLP’s Analysis of Financial Regulatory Reform [Dodd-Frank Act] for the American Bankers Association (2010), 21st Century Money, Banking & Commerce (1998), Management of Risks Created by Internet-Initiated Value Transfers (National Automated Clearing House Association 1995), The Fair Lending Guide (Glasser Legal Works 1995), and Contracting with the RTC and FDIC (Prentice Hall Law and Business 1991). He was Chair of the Electronic Financial Services Subcommittee of the Cyberspace Committee of the American Bar Association.

He was Director of the Program on Financial Regulation & Technology and a Professor of Law at Scalia Law School from 2018 to 2021. He taught classes on FinTech, Regulation of Financial Institutions, Banking Law, and Privacy & Information Security Law. Prior to that he was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the school for more than 20 years.

He was a partner at Vartanian & Ledig, PLLC, a Washington, D.C. financial services law firm, from 2018 to 2023. He practiced law in the Financial Services groups at Dechert LLP and Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson LLP from 1984 to 2018. Prior to that, he was an attorney at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.

He has a J.D. from George Washington University Law School and a B.A. from Harpur College at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

William “Bill” Isaac is Chairman of Secura/Isaac Group, a global advisory firm serving the financial services industry. Bill has an unparalleled career in the financial industry and public service, spanning over 50 years. He served as Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) from 1978 through 1985, working to maintain stability during the banking and thrift crises of the 1980s, when over 3,000 banks and thrifts failed. He also served as Chairman of Fifth Third Bancorp.

Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute. His career has included being the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury, a fellow at American Enterprise Institute, and President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. Mr. Pollock focuses on financial policy issues, including financial systems, political finance, central banking, uncertainty and risk, housing finance and financial cycles. He is the author of Boom and Bust and Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised, and co-author of Surprised Again! as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony. Alex is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University. He and his wife, Anne, have four grown children and ten grandchildren, and live in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Alex’s work is available at alexjpollock.com.

Todd J. Zywicki is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University Antonin Scalia School of Law, Research Fellow of the Law & Economics Center, and former Executive Director of the Law and Economics Center. In 2020-21 he served as the Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Task Force on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted into the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He served as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law & Economics in 2019. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. In 2009, Professor Zywicki was the recipient of the Institute for Humane Studies 2009 Charles G. Koch Outstanding IHS Alum Award. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017 and as Editor from 2001-2002. He teaches in the area of Bankruptcy, Contracts, Commercial Law, Law & Economics, and Public Choice and the Law. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.

Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his JD from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an MA in Economics from Clemson University and an AB cum laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.

Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He has been one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network, both All Time and during the Past 12 Months, and is currently ranked in the top 10% in total number of downloads for all fields on SSRN. From 2013-2017 and 2010-2014 he was among the ten most-cited faculty in the field of Commercial Law. From 2005-2009 was the eleventh most-highly cited law professor in the fields of Commercial Law and Bankruptcy and the most-cited Commercial Law and Bankruptcy scholar under the age of 45 (at that time). He has testified several times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, Washington Times, Forbes, Nightline, National Review, NBC Nightly News, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Fox and Friends, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, ABC Radio, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Radio Show, Neil Cavuto Show, John Batchelor Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show. He is a contributor to the popular legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy.

Professor Zywicki is also a Senior Fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and has previously served as a Senior Scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,  Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, Senior Fellow of the International Center for Law and Economics, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, and Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including the European Union, Germany, Canada, Guatemala, Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Romania. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.” In 2011 Professor Zywicki delivered the Dean Lindsey Cowen Lecture in Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve School of Law. In 2013 he was invited to deliver a Vision Series Lecture at George Mason University (watch here). In 2013 he delivered the Jack R. Lee Chair of Financial Institutions and Consumer Finance Lecture at Mississippi State University School of Business. He was awarded the 2012 Society for the Development of Austrian Economics prize for “Best Article in Austrian Economics” for his article “Hayekian Anarchism” (co-authored with Edward Peter Stringham).

Professor Zywicki is a member of the board of trustees or advisory board of numerous nonprofit and educational organizations, including the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, the Board of Directors of the The Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society’s Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), the Board of Trustees of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (where he also previously served as Chairman). He also previously served on the Advisory Council of the Centro para el Analisis de las Decisiones Publicas, Universidad de Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala City, Guatemala (Public Choice Center at University of Francisco Marroquin). He has also served as Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a trustee of Yorktown University.