Panelists

Michael Barr was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2022 and served as Vice Chair for Supervision until February 28, 2025. Prior to his appointment to the Board, Mr. Barr was the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Frank Murphy Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, the Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Proffitt Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and the founder and faculty director of the University of Michigan’s Center on Finance, Law & Policy. At the University of Michigan Law School, Mr. Barr taught financial regulation and international finance and co-founded the International Transactions Clinic and the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project.

Barr served as the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions, 2009-2010. Under President William J. Clinton, he served as the Treasury Secretary’s special assistant, as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, as special adviser to the President, and as a special adviser and counselor on the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State. He also served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, and previously to the Honorable Pierre N. Leval, then of the Southern District of New York.

Barr received a BA in history from Yale University, an MPhil in international relations from Oxford University, and a JD from Yale Law School.

Neil Bloomfield is the Co-head of Financial Regulatory Advice & Response group at Moore & Van Allen. In his practice, he represents clients with responses to inquiries by government authorities at the international, federal, and state level. These include the OCC, FRB, SEC, the North Carolina Attorney General, European Commission, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. He leads teams through investigations concerning a wide variety of issues, ranging from foreign exchange trading and LIBOR to institutional whistleblower complaints and consumer lending. Bloomfield also serves as an adjunct professor at Wake Forest Law, teaching a course on government investigations. Early in his career, he practiced law at Thacher Proffitt & Wood.

Bloomfield earned a BA from Wake Forest University and a JD from Boston University School of Law.

Brad Boland is the Senior Managing Director of Huntington National Bank. He is the Head of the Huntington Fund Finance group. In this role he leads a team that is responsible for the origination, structuring and ongoing management of various fund finance products including subscription facilities, management company lines of credit as well as certain ancillary products that are relevant to Huntington’s private equity client base. Prior to joining last year, Boland worked as a Managing Director in Signature Bank’s Fund Bank Division for originating and structuring an array of fund lending products for private equity clients. Before this, he was the Manager Director and co-Head of Originations at Wells Fargo.

Earlier in his career, Boland spent ten years at Bank of America in various areas including the Healthcare Finance, Sports Finance & Advisory and Global Structured Products groups. Bolan received his BA from Davidson College.

Robert Cammilleri is Global Head of Fund and Asset Level Financing at Barings, and a member of the firm’s Capital Markets and Strategic Relationship Management Group, with over 23 years of experience in the financial services industry. In this role, he is responsible for the financing of over $15bn of liabilities for 50 borrowers/issuers. Prior to joining Barings, he served for over six years at Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) as Executive Director, Head of Institutional Coverage in North America. In this role, he was responsible for non-bank financial institution relationships, including sponsor coverage. He led the origination, execution, syndication and portfolio management of loans and hedging lines, supporting funds invested in credit, private equity, real estate and infrastructure. Prior to CBA, Cammilleri spent 13 years at National Australia Bank (NAB) where he worked in several roles, most recently as Director, Financial Institutions, where he established and lead the sponsor coverage and fund finance business in New York.

During the global financial crisis (GFC), Cammilleri managed a portfolio of non-core assets and was involved in litigation recovery for NAB. Prior to the GFC, Cammilleri spent eight years in asset backed finance, three years of which were spent as an asset-backed commercial paper conduit lender at NAB and the remaining five as a structured finance rating analyst at Fitch.

Cammilleri graduated with a BA from Northeastern University with a dual concentration in accounting and finance.

Mady Clahane serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Volume 29 of the North Carolina Banking Institute Journal. Clahane earned her BA in Psychology and Human Development & Family Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduation, Clahane will join the law firm Morgan Lewis as a general litigation associate in their Philadelphia office.

Macy Cope serves as the Institute Editor for Volume 29 of the North Carolina Banking Institute Journal. She earned her undergraduate degree in International Business and Economics from the Darla Moore School of Business at the South Carolina Honors College. After graduation, Cope will join the Charleston office of Womble Bond Dickinson as a business litigation associate.

Beth DeSimone is the Chief Risk Officer and General Counsel at SouthState Bank, N.A. She oversees risk functions, corporate governance, and legal, including M&A, contract negotiation and vendor management for the organization. Previously, she was the Chief Risk Officer and General Counsel at CommunityOne Bank, N.A., in Charlotte. DeSimone spend most of her career as an M&A and corporate and bank regulatory attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC representing numerous financial services companies in mergers, acquisitions, regulatory matters, strategic planning and implementing new products and services.

DeSimone received a BA from Wheaton College and a JD from William & Mary Law School.

Dave Freeman is a partner at Arnold & Porter and currently serves as the leader of its Financial Services practice group. In his role, Freeman represents financial institutions, investment managers, and other key stakeholders on a variety of banking and securities related matters. Specifically, he assists banks, broker-dealers, and investment firms on complying with applicable state and federal financial law.

Freeman received his BA, MBA, and JD from the University of Virginia.

Charles Gray is a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Financial Services Group. His practice focuses on advising financial services clients on a wide variety of bank regulatory, supervisory and enforcement matters. He previously served as Deputy General Counsel at the Federal Reserve Board. Earlier in his career, he was Vice President in the Financial Institution Supervision Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His experiences have allowed him to speak and advise on bank regulatory law and policy, including in the areas of resolution planning, capital, liquidity, and cross-border supervision of international financial firms.

Gray received an AB from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School.

LK Greenbacker is Of Counsel in the Corporate department of Paul Hastings. She is a member of the Fintech and Payment Systems practice, focusing on regulatory, transactional, and compliance matters relating to bank and non-bank financial institutions. She advises on regulatory issues within the banking and payments space, in addition to guiding financial and non-financial firms on issues related to economic sanctions and trade controls. As part of her transactional practice, she prepares and negotiates agreements by and between banks, emerging companies, non-bank lenders, card networks, money transmitters, program managers and others within the banking and financial technology sector. Greenbacker also represents individuals and entities in enforcement actions before state and federal regulatory bodies.

She earned a BA from the University of North Carolina and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Amber Hay is a partner at Arnold & Porter. In her role, she advises traditional financial institutions, nonbank financial service companies, and financial technology companies on a wide range of regulatory, transactional, and corporate matters. She advises clients on laws, regulations, and legislative developments related to prudential regulations, virtual currencies, electronic payments, custodian activities including those involving digital wallets, and service provider arrangements between banks and non-banks. Hay also advises clients in the structuring of corporate transactions and commercial arrangements related to the offering of payments and credit products and services using technology, as well as the acquisition and sale of financial institutions and non-bank financial service companies.

Prior to Arnold & Porter, she was a Senior Attorney at the Federal Reserve Board. She was seconded to the Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representative. Hay began her career at Honingman Miller Schwartz and Cohn. She earned a BA from the University of Michigan, pursued graduate studies in Corporate Law at the University College London, and earned a JD from the University of Michigan Law School.

Erin Henderson is an Associate General Counsel in the Legal Regulatory Group at U.S. Bank. Henderson has previous experience as an in-house attorney in financial services, supporting both legal regulatory matters and the consumer mortgage line of business, and as an attorney in private practice. She focuses her practice on consumer regulatory issues.

Henderson earned her Bachelor’s from Pennsylvania State University and her JD from the University of Notre Dame School of Law.

Esther Kahng currently serves as the Head of Public Policy and Chief of Staff at Zest AI, serving as a strategic advisor to the CEO and leading the company’s engagement with policymakers and regulatory bodies. Prior to this role, she was Chief Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Financial Services. In this capacity, she served as a top advisor to Ranking Member Maxine Waters on all matters under the Committee’s jurisdiction and played a leading role in the development and implementation of the Ranking Member’s policy priorities and legislative strategy. Before serving as Chief Counsel, she specialized in mortgage finance, affordable housing, and insurance policy issues as the Director of Housing and Insurance Policy, Senior Counsel, and Counsel for the Committee. Kahng’s legislative work over a decade with the Committee has led to well over 150 bills and amendments passing into law, including critical and unprecedented investments into housing and small businesses that were passed into law during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She earned her BA at UC San Diego and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center.

Larry Kaplan is the Chair of the Bank Regulatory group at Paul Hastings. Kaplan focuses on corporate structuring, control, operations, compliance, problem banks, and enforcement. He advises clients on anti-money laundering and sanctions programs and data security and privacy matters. Kaplan regularly works with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, particularly the Volcker Rule. In addition to his work at Paul Hastings, Kaplan serves as an Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Before his time with Paul Hastings, Kaplan was partner at Nelson Mullins.

Kaplan received a BA from the University of Michigan and a JD from George Washington University Law School.

Aaron Klein is Miriam K. Carliner Chair and senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. He focuses on financial technology and regulation, payments, macroeconomics, and infrastructure finance and policy. Prior to joining Brookings in 2016, he directed the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative. Between 2009 and 2012, Klein served as the deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Department of Treasury. He worked on financial regulatory reform issues, including crafting and helping secure passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.  Before this, Klein was the chief economist of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee for Chairmen Chris Dodd and Paul Sarbanes. He worked on numerous pieces of major legislation, including the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (TARP), Housing and Economic Recovery Act, and the SAFETEA Act of 2005. He earned his AB from Dartmouth College and his MPA from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Melissa Koide is the founder and CEO of FinRegLab. This financial services research organization examines how technology and data can help achieve public policy aspirations, address regulatory requirements, and lead to a more efficient and inclusive financial marketplace. Prior to establishing FinRegLab, Koide served for four and one-half years as the U.S. Treasury Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Consumer Policy where she developed and executed the Treasury Department’s consumer policies in the areas of credit, student loans, payments, savings, credit reporting, fintech, and financial inclusion.

Koide is currently a fintech advisor to the Milken Institute. Before joining the U.S. Treasury Department, she was the Vice President of Policy at the Center for Financial Services Innovation. She earned a Master’s degree from Georgetown University.

Aparna Konde serves as the Executive Editor for Volume 29 of the North Carolina Banking Institute Journal. She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration at Baylor University as a member of the Baylor Business Fellows program. Upon graduating from law school, Konde will join the corporate practice group at K&L Gates.

Matt Martin serves as Chief Counsel & Corporate Secretary at First Citizens Bank. In his role, he provides legal counsel to the Board and Executive Leadership Team, oversees legal support for the general bank, and corporate functions, and leads the legal department. Prior to joining First Citizens, Martin served as U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina. In this role, he led the U.S. Department of Justice prosecution office responsible for all federal investigations and prosecutions in the Middle District. Prior to serving as U.S. Attorney, he was Associate General Counsel of Duke Energy, where he was responsible for litigation, risk management, and dispute resolution, and chaired an internal leadership development program. Before joining Duke Energy, Martin was partner with the law firm of Smith Anderson in Raleigh, N.C. He began his legal career with the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.

Martin received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mike Mascia is Senior Vice President, Head of the Fund Finance, for EverBank. His team provides Subscription Facilities, NAV lines, Hybrids, GP Facilities, and other financing, advisory, and placement solutions to the private capital community. Mike was previously the leader of the Fund Finance practice at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, and a member of the firm’s Management Committee. Mascia began his legal career at Mayer Brown. Mascia, along with his wife Maria, funded the Mascia Family Banking Scholarships at UNC School of Law, which provide scholarship assistance to members of the law school’s Banking Institute.

He earned his BA and JD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then went on to earn his MBA at MIT Sloan School of Management.

Bao Nguyen is Senior Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief of Staff of Flagstar Financial, Inc. and of its bank subsidiary, Flagstar Bank. Prior to joining Flagstar in April of 2024, he served as a Partner for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP where he advised global and regional financial institutions, fintech and digital asset companies and private equity firms on the regulatory aspects of complex transactions, charters, compliance matters and enforcement issues. Before that, he served as Principal Deputy Chief Counsel at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Earlier in his career he served as Acting Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as Senior Counsel at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and as a Banking Fellow in the U.S. Senate, negotiating key reforms to the U.S. regulatory framework as part of the Dodd-Frank Act. Nguyen received his BA from North Carolina State University and his JD from the UNC School of Law.

Ed O’Keefe is the Co-head of Financial Regulatory Advice & Response group at Moore & Van Allen. In his role, he advises and represents financial institutions, including investigations, litigation, regulatory compliance, governance, cybersecurity, compensation, and risk management. In addition, he advises on law department management and effective legal engagement with regulators and control functions. Prior to joining Moore & Van Allen, he served as the Global General Counsel of Bank of America Corporation and as a senior executive with Bank of America’s compliance, technology, human resources, and operations functions.

O’Keefe earned a BA from the University of Rhode Island and a JD from Fordham University School of Law.

Tim O’Shea is a Senior Director for Klaros Group, an advisory and investment firm focused on the future of financial services. O’Shea focuses on fintechs, BaaS, and payments, drawing on experience in startup and community bank leadership and consulting. Most recently, O’Shea served as an executive in residence with QED Investors, where he provided fractional compliance leadership and strategic advice to portfolio companies, helping especially with new bank partnerships, product launches, and growth initiatives. He remains with QED as a senior advisor focused on regulation and policy. Previously, O’Shea led legal and enterprise risk for Reserve Trust, a B2B payments company with direct access to the U.S. payments system through a Federal Reserve master account. Earlier, he worked for nearly a decade with Promontory Financial Group, assisting fintechs, traditional institutions, and governmental and self-regulatory organizations with strategic, regulatory, and risk issues. O’Shea has also served as chief of staff of Carver Federal Savings Bank, a community development bank supervised by the OCC, where he led strategic and business planning. During law school, he worked for the majority staff of the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, helping develop the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation.

O’Shea received his law and graduate degrees from Duke University and his undergraduate degree from New York University.

Andrew Olmem is the Managing Partner of the Washington, DC office of Mayer Brown. As the co-head of its Financial Services Product Team. His practice focuses on complex financial services regulatory matters. Andrew previously served as the Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC), where he oversaw the development and coordination of the administration’s domestic economic policies, including for financial services. He played a key role in the passage of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, which improved the tailoring of regulation for community and regional banks, and the CARES Act. Earlier, Andrew served as the Republican Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director for the US Senate Banking Committee. He served on the committee staff during its consideration of the legislative response to the 2008 financial crisis and was a lead negotiator for the Dodd-Frank Act.  Prior to law school, he started his career as an assistant economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

Olmem earned a BA and a JD from Washington and Lee University.

Douglas Quay is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Bambu Systems, LLC. He works within the neobank industry, focusing on payment systems and product design, development and distribution of mobile banking applications and banking and payment solutions. Quay’s previous roles include serving as the Director at the Trivantis Corporation, Chairman at Protective Draft Credit LLC (Simply Credit), and Chairman at Centennial Partners.

He earned his BA from Vanderbilt University, his JD from the University of Memphis, and his LLM in Taxation from NYU School of Law.

Justin Reimer is a Structured Products and Treasury Associate Counsel at Golub Capital.  Reimer is responsible for structuring, negotiating, and executing debt financings, derivatives, and hedging transactions. Prior to joining Golub Capital, he was an Associate at Winston & Strawn LLP in the Finance group, where he represented asset managers, private funds, and banks in a wide range of fund finance, structured finance, and corporate finance transactions.  Prior to this position, Reimer was an Associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP in the Fund Finance group.  In this role, he represented lead arrangers and lenders in the negotiation of subscription credit facilities, NAV loans, hybrid facilities, and investment manager financings.

Reimer received a BS from Auburn University and a JD from UNC School of Law.

Pramit Sheth is the Head of Structured Products at Dawson Partners (“Dawson”), formerly Whitehorse Liquidity Partners. Sheth and has more than 18 years of credit experience in the structured and fund finance industry. Prior to joining Dawson in 2023, he spent 12 years with Kroll Bond Rating Agency as a Senior Managing Director. In his most recent role there, Sheth was accountable for all new and existing Investment Funds debt ratings globally. Prior to that he was a senior member of the CMBS Structured Finance Ratings team, where he helped develop various methodologies and was part of the analytical credit team.

Sheth holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and Information Systems with a concentration in Mathematics from NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Eric Spitler joined the UNC Law faculty in 2020 as an Adjunct Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests include banking and securities law, with a focus on legal responses to financial crises. Spitler is the author of a comprehensive review of the efforts to amend the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. His work has appeared in the American Banker and the North Carolina Banking Institute journal. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on deposit insurance, financial reform, and financial crises. Early in his career, Spitler practiced law at Neely & Player in Atlanta, Georgia and worked for two Members of Congress. Subsequently, Spitler served as Director of Legislative Affairs for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during the 2008 financial crisis and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during the negotiations and passage of the Dodd-Frank Act.  After retiring from the federal government, he formed Delverton Strategies, LLC, a financial consulting firm.

Spitler earned his BA from Furman University and his JD from the UNC School of Law.

Scott Stengel is the Chief Legal Officer and corporate secretary for Truist Financial Corporation, a purpose-driven financial-services company. He is a member of Truist’s Operating Council and also oversees the firm’s government-affairs and Community Reinvestment Act teams. Stengel joined Truist in 2023 from Ally Financial, where he served as general counsel with responsibility for its legal affairs and corporate-secretarial and government-relations functions. Prior to that, he served as general counsel and corporate secretary for UMB Financial Corporation in Kansas City, MO. He earlier practiced law as a partner at King & Spalding LLP and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in Washington, DC, with a focus on global banking, capital markets, and government affairs. He began his career as a law clerk for the Honorable Douglas O. Tice Jr., in Richmond, VA.

Stengel received a BA from the University of Notre Dame before earning his JD from Notre Dame Law School.

Meg Tahyar is Head of Financial Institutions and a member of the Fintech team at Davis Polk. She provides strategic bank and financial regulatory advice to clients including many of the largest U.S. and non-U.S. financial institutions, regional banks, fintechs, cryptocurrency exchanges, and other digital assets companies. In 2023, she led the teams representing the Signature and Silicon Valley bridge banks and advised JPMorgan on its acquisition of the assets and liabilities of First Republic. This work built on years of representing more than two dozen clients on living wills. She has been involved in several regional bank combinations. She also advises on corporate governance, consent order remediation, bank chartering, payment systems, fintech partnerships, bank powers and activities, cryptocurrencies, digital assets, securities disclosure, capital and liquidity, and the Federal Reserve’s liquidity programs.

Tahyar is a member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee. She co-authored Financial Regulation: Law and Policy, a leading textbook, and FinTech Law: The Case Studies. Tahyar received her AB from the University of Michigan and a JD from Columbia Law School.

Phill Wertz is an Associate General Counsel in the Bank Regulatory Group of the Legal Department of Bank of America Corporation and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.  He provides enterprise-wide legal advice and subject matter expertise on U.S. bank regulatory matters.  Wertz joined Bank of America Legal Department in February 2001. Prior to joining Bank of America, he was an associate with the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, where he worked on commercial and capital markets financing transactions. He received his BA from UNC-CH and graduated from the Duke University School of Law with a joint JD/LLM degree in law and a master’s degree in international and comparative legal studies.