Nancy Liao is the John R. Raben/Sullivan & Cromwell Executive Director, Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law, and a Senior Research Scholar in Law. She studies the impact of technology on finance and capital markets, and how existing legal frameworks both shape and are shaped by technology. As Executive Director, Liao hosted the 2017 Weil, Gotshal & Manges Roundtable on Blockchain: The Future of Finance and Capital Markets?. She has spoken about FinTech and blockchain before the Securities and Exchange Commission, at industry conferences (e.g., the ABA International Law Section Annual Meeting and ALM LegalTech), and at Yale University (e.g., Yale Center Beijing, Yale Blockchain for Sustainable Solutions Conference, and the Yale School of Management and Yale School of Art Cryptocurrency Workshop). She is also the author of "Why Does Blockchain Matter?" and "On Settlement Finality and Distributed Ledger Technology."
Liao’s interest in technology is grounded in her prior experience in prudential, payment system, and derivatives policy and regulation. Prior to becoming Executive Director in 2016, she was Assistant General Counsel at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. ("ISDA"), where she crafted and executed cross-jurisdictional advocacy strategies pertaining to derivatives clearing. Before ISDA, she practiced in the public and nonprofit sectors, first at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (where she led multiple rulemaking teams implementing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and served as Special Counsel and Policy Advisor to Commissioner Scott D. O’Malia) and then at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (where she was counsel and officer and served as Secretary of the Financial Markets Lawyers Group, a group of leading in-house practitioners supporting activity in foreign exchange and other financial markets).
Liao graduated from Harvard University (magna cum laude in government) and received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was Co-Director of the Temporary Restraining Order Project and Equal Justice America Fellow, Co-President of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (then known as PANA), and editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. She began her legal career as an Associate at Latham & Watkins LLP.
