Shlomit Wagman
Affiliated Fellow (in practice)
Dr. Shlomit Wagman served as the Director-General of the Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority (IMPA), a financial regulator and law enforcement agency, from 2016 to 2022, and as the Acting Director-General of the Israel Privacy Protection Authority from 2019 to 2021.
She was the Head of the Israeli delegation to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing watchdog from 2016 to 2022, and also served as a Co-Chair of its operational working group, a member of the Steering Group, and was a nominee for Presidency.
She led major national reforms, most recently regulating cryptocurrencies, and the historic accession of Israel to the FATF as a member country after an evaluation process in which Israel was placed among the top three most effective countries in the world. Under her leadership, IMPA doubled its size and exposed hundreds of money laundering and terrorism financing cases, leading to the crackdown on major criminal organizations and the seizure of billions of illicit funds. IMPA further received various awards, including the Egmont’s Global Best Financial Investigation (2016, 2021) and recognition by the FATF as one of the three most effective FIUs worldwide.
Dr. Wagman worked in the private sector with leading law firms, including Wachtell Lipton in NYC and Gross-Hodak in Israel. She is the co-editor of the book "Cybercrime" (NYU Press, 2007), with Prof. Jack Balkin et al. She served as an adjunct lecturer at Tel Aviv University and Raichman University (2007–2012) and was a fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School (2003–2007).
She holds both JSD and LLM degrees from Yale Law School (2007, 2005) and a joint LLB and BA degree (magna cum laude) in law and business management from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001). She clerked for the Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, Prof. Aharon Barak.
She is currently a research fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) at Kennedy School of Government and a visiting researcher at the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard Law School.