Yesha Yadav, professor of law and Enterprise Scholar, has been nominated to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technology Advisory Panel as a special government employee.
The panel advises the CFTC’s five commissioners on issues related to new technologies, such as blockchain technology and related “distributed ledger” initiatives; virtual currencies and related futures products; machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer power; automated trading technologies; and cybersecurity. Members include representatives from companies producing and employing new technologies to create products traded on the markets or employ technologies to facilitate trading; they meet with commissioners each year to assess potential impacts on capital markets infrastructure, markets and participants as well as to discuss market and regulatory developments, changes in regulatory reporting, and challenges and risks presented by evolving technologies.
Yadav attended her first meeting as a panel member Feb. 14 and participated in a discussion of developments, challenges and risks around automated trading technologies, focusing on potential areas for regulatory consideration. She studies financial and securities regulation, and her recent research has focused possible regulatory solutions to minimize risks related to automated trading algorithms.
The CFTC is currently chaired by J. Christopher Giancarlo ’84. CFTC commissioners are appointed by the president and serve staggered five-year terms.
Before joining Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 2011, Yadav worked as 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. She also has four years of experience practicing in the financial regulation and derivatives group of the international law firm Clifford Chance.
