Yesha Yadav

Biography

Yesha Yadav's research interests lie in financial market regulation, securities regulation, and corporate bankruptcy. She has developed expertise in market structure, exchange design, digital assets, payments, distressed debt and restructuring. In the area of market structure, her work examines the regulation of trading ecosystems for various asset classes, notably, cryptocurrencies (including stablecoins), equity, U.S. Treasuries and corporate bonds.

Before joining Vanderbilt's Law faculty, Professor Yadav worked as a legal counsel with the World Bank in its finance, private-sector development and infrastructure unit, where she specialized in financial regulation and insolvency, and creditor-debtor rights. Before joining the World Bank, she practiced in the London and Paris offices of Clifford Chance in the firm's financial regulation and derivatives group. As part of her work in payments regulation, she advised the European Payments Council on the establishment of the Single Euro Payments Area.

Professor Yadav has served as honorary advisor to India’s Financial Services Law Reform Commission and on the Atlantic Council’s Task Force on Divergence, Transatlantic Financial Reform and G-20 Agenda. She has served as a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Committee, where she served as Vice-Chair of the Distributed Ledger Technology Subcommittee and was a member of the Algorithmic Trading Subcommittees. Professor Yadav is a current member of Nasdaq’s Hearing Panel and the Board of Advisors of the Digital Dollar Project. In other public service, she has worked as Vice-Chair of the Tennessee State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Professor Yadav earned an M.A. in Law and Modern Languages (First Class) at the University of Cambridge, after which she earned an LL.M. at Harvard Law School. She was a Vanderbilt University Chancellor Faculty Fellow for 2019-21. In 2022, she won Vanderbilt University’s Chancellor Research Award for her research into U.S. Treasury market regulation. She was honored in 2020 as a second-time winner of the student-selected Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award for excellence in teaching.