The CFTC has brought two names with strong connections to the upper echelons of federal government in to head one of its key advisory committees.

CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero announced that Carole House will serve as Chair of the Technology Advisory Committee and Ari Redbord as Vice Chair

Goldsmith Romero, said: “I am especially honored to have Carole House serve as Chair, and Ari Redbord as Vice Chair – both highly regarded for their exceptional federal service and expertise in complex technological issues.”

Chair Carole House is currently an Executive in Residence at Terranet Ventures, Inc, and has recently served as the Director for Cybersecurity and Secure Digital Innovation for the White House National Security Council. There, she was ‘instrumental’ in President Biden’s executive order on Ensuring responsible development of digital assets.

Vice Chair Ari Redbord comes from the blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs, where he acts as the Head of Legal and Government Affairs. Redbord has previously served as the Senior Advisor to the Treasury Deputy Secretary and the Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. He is also a former federal prosecutor. 

Cyber attacks and DeFi

The TAC, which is one of the CFTC’s five advisory committees, works to assist the Commission in identifying and understanding impacts and implications of technological innovation in financial markets and services.

“With our markets facing some of the most challenging and innovative times for next-generation technology, I am honored that the new members of the Technology Advisory Committee have agreed to this public service”, said Goldsmith Romero. “To protect our markets from increasingly-sophisticated cyber attacks, to ensure responsible development of digital assets in a way that protects customers, and to ensure that the implications of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are well understood, the Commission requires advice from technology experts.”

The first meeting with the renewed committee will take place on March 22, 2023. It will focus on decentralized finance, cyber resilience, and responsible artificial intelligence issues. The TAC will also discuss the renewing of the Cybersecurity subcommittee, create a new subcommittee on digital assets and blockchain technology that combines and expands two previous subcommittees, and establish a new subcommittee on emerging technologies. 

TAC members

The members of the Technology Advisory Committee are:

• Chair: Carole House, Executive in Residence, Terranet Ventures Inc.
• Vice Chair: Ari Redbord, Head of Legal and Government Affairs, TRM Labs.
• Todd Conklin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Office of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection, US Department of the Treasury.
• Kavita Jain, Deputy Associate Director, Innovation Policy, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
• Jeffery Zhang, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School.
• Dan Awrey, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School.
• Nicol Turner Lee, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies; Director, Center for Technology Innovation, The Brookings Institution.
• Michael Shaulov, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Fireblocks.
• Nikos Andrikogiannopoulos, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Metrika.
• Joe Saluzzi, Partner, Co-Founder, Partner, and Co-Head of Equity Trading, Themis Trading LLC.
• Emin Gün Sirer, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Ava Labs.
• Dan Guido, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Trail of Bits.
• Christian Catalini, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Lightspark.
• Timothy Gallagher, Managing Director, Cyber Risk and Investigations, Kroll.
• Michael Greenwald, Global Lead, Digital Assets and Financial Innovation, Amazon Web Services.
• Jonah Crane, Partner, Klaros Group.
• Jill Gunter, Chief Strategy Officer, Espresso Systems.
• Adam Zarazinski, Chief Executive Officer, Inca Digital.
• Cantrell Dumas, Director, Derivatives Policy, Better Markets, Inc.
• Michael Panfil, Senior Director, Lead Counsel, Climate Risk & Clean Power, Environmental Defense Fund.
• Stanley Guzik, Chief Technology & Innovation Officer, S&P Global Commodity Insights.
• Francesca Rossi, IBM Fellow and AI Ethics Global Leader, IBM.
• Ben Milne, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Brale.
• Jennifer Ilkiw, President, ICE Futures U.S.
• Justin Slaughter, Policy Director, Paradigm.
• Hilary Allen, Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Scholarship, American University, Washington College of Law.
• Steve Suppan, Senior Policy Analyst, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy.
• Corey Then, Vice President of Global Policy, Circle.
• Todd Smith, Director of Centralized Data Science and Analytics, National Futures Association.
• Sunil Cutinho, Chief Information Officer, CME Group.
• John Palmer, Cboe Global Markets, Inc., President, Cboe Digital.
• “These experts can provide us foundational knowledge about the technology, as well as the complex and nuanced impacts and implications of technology on financial markets”, added Goldsmith Romero.

The TAC was created in 1999 to advise the CFTC on complex issues at the intersection of technology, law, policy, and finance. The TAC is one of five Advisory Committees overseen by the CFTC. The others are Agricultural Advisory Committee, Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee, Global Markets Advisory Committee, and  Market Risk Advisory Committee.