Leadership
Sheila Warren
Chief Executive Officer
Sheila Warren is the CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation - the premier global alliance for advancing the promise of this new technology through research, education and advocacy.
Sheila founded the World Economic Forum’s blockchain and digital assets team and was a member of the Executive Leadership Team for the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. She oversaw tech policy strategy across 14 countries and regularly briefed ministers, CEOs of the Fortune 100 and Heads of State.
She spent significant time as a lawyer and executive in the nonprofit sector helping companies work with emerging technology to solve problems and increase efficiency. She was on the leadership team at TechSoup and built NGOsource, an online service that helps US foundations reduce costs on cross-border grants.
Sheila began her career as a Wall Street attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP after earning her J.D. at Harvard Law School. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in Economics.
She is the co-host of Money Reimagined, a CoinDesk TV show and podcast.
Brett Quick
Head of Government Affairs, North America
Brett brings considerable public sector experience to her new role having worked in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in key financial services roles.
As staff director of the Senate Banking Committee's National Security, International Trade and Finance subcommittee and Deputy Chief of Staff for House Financial Services Committee Chairman Emeritus Spencer Bachus, Brett worked across the financial services ecosystem -- on Capitol Hill, with the administration, and across party lines in order to achieve lasting policy goals
Most recently, as Co-Head of Government Affairs for the Financial Services Forum, Brett has coordinated the macro prudential regulatory strategy of member companies with Congress and the agencies.
Linda Jeng
Chief Global Regulatory Officer and General Counsel
She is a Washington veteran, having spent most of her career in financial regulation and stability at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and other regulatory agencies, the Treasury Department, the Senate, and the Financial Stability Board in Switzerland.
Linda was the Chief Policy & Regulatory Officer for the Centre Consortium, the stablecoin standards organization, and the Global Head of Policy at the startup Transparent Financial Systems.
She is a Visiting Scholar on Financial Technology and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for International Economic Law and a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke Law School.
Yaya J. Fanusie
Director of Policy for AML & Cyber Risk
He spent seven years as an economic and counterterrorism analyst in the CIA, briefing federal law enforcement, military personnel, White House-level policy makers and the President.
After government service, he joined the think tank world and as Director of Analysis at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance led research on sanctions evasion and terrorist financing threats. In 2016 he began tracking the illicit use of crypto and wrote some of the first public analysis on a terrorist crypto crowdfunding campaign. He later published a major study on efforts by Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and China to build national blockchain infrastructure.
Yaya is currently an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He is a frequent media commentator and has testified before Congress multiple times on illicit financing issues. He is considered a leading expert on China’s CBDC.
Annie Dizon
Chief Operating Officer
With more than 20 years of tech, operations, and marketing experience, Annie has held several senior executive positions at the global social impact nonprofit TechSoup; most recently serving as Vice President of Customer Experience.
Prior to TechSoup, she led marketing communications programs for leading Fortune 500 companies in the financial and professional services sectors.
Amanda Russo
Director of Communications
As a strategic communications advisor to CEOs, heads of state, and policymakers, Amanda worked on the World Economic Forum’s Public Engagement leadership team as Head of Media Content.
She led C-suite media relations and content for IHS Markit research divisions across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Amanda started her career as a terrorism and intelligence analyst.
Advisors
Senator Cory Gardner
Political Advisor
Cory is a former U.S. Senator who honorably represented the state of Colorado from 2015 to 2021 after a decade in the U.S. House of Representatives.
During his tenure, Cory was consistently recognized as one of the most bi-partisan members of the Senate, sponsoring and passing milestone legislation like the Great American Outdoors Act, America COMPETES Act, the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act and the 988 Suicide Prevention Hotline. He served on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Mark Foster
EU Policy Lead
Mark has over 20 years of experience advising public and private sector entities on EU policy and politics.
He started his career in Brussels as a European Parliamentary Assistant from 2003 to 2007. He later developed expertise in EU financial services as a Senior Official in the UK Permanent Representation.
In 2011, he moved to Kreab, a global public affairs and consultancy firm, where he became Partner. He held elected roles in trade associations including vice-chair at the financial services committee of AmCham EU and vice-chair for the EU/UK task force at the British Chamber of Commerce to the EU.
Mark was VP of Government Relations at Barclays from 2019-2021 before establishing his own business – Strategic Advisory Management - at the start of this year.
Sean Lee
Senior APAC Advisor
Sean is an advisor and innovator of Web3 and FinTech platforms.
He has held elected, leadership roles in several Brussels-based trade associations before starting his own advisory business in 2022.
He advises crypto startups and engages in mentorship and advocacy programs including the MIT Entrepreneurship & FinTech Innovation Node and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School.
He is currently the co-founder of Odsy Network, and serves as the Executive Director of the Odsy Foundation. Previously he was the CEO of Algorand Foundation, where he built a global team to propel the blockchain protocol into a top-20 crypto asset by market cap during his tenure.
Katherine Wu
Research Fellow
Katherine Wu is a Venture Partner at Archetype, a venture capital firm focused on leading early investments in high potential crypto startups. Prior to Archetype, Katherine was the Senior Lead on the Coinbase Ventures team, where she led investments on behalf of Coinbase and scaled the investment team. She oversaw a record-breaking year in deal-making, putting Coinbase Ventures among the most active corporate venture funds in operation.
She is also a member of the Salesforce Web3 Advisory Board, where she guides on relevant industry trends and shapes thinking on web3 product roadmapd and other opportunities for investment and support.
Katherine has advised and worked with several top tier crypto protocols and companies (including Solana Labs, the Ethereum Foundation, and others) on issues spanning from investment strategies to go-to-market and other operational processes.
Fellows
Christian Lansang
Christian worked on Project Hamilton as Technical Researcher at the Boston Federal Reserve. Before working at the Boston Fed, Christian analyzed Venezuelan stablecoin development and international manufacturing innovation at the Brookings Institution.
Christian graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law and received his degree in Science, Technology, and Society from Brown University.
Henley Hopkinton
Henley focuses on financial markets and their regulation both academically and professionally. During law school in the US, he spent time interning at the Treasury Department, the SEC, the CFTC, and the FTC, in addition to a summer associate position at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in M&A.
He holds a J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and is also an MSc candidate in Law & Finance at the University of Oxford concurrently with his work at the Crypto Council for Innovation. Previously, he was a Latin teacher in the UK.
Elizabeth Santucci
Elizabeth Santucci joins the Crypto Council as the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) first Digital Development Executive Fellow, a new initiative to build the technology skills of foreign service officers.
With USAID for 15 years, Elizabeth is an International Development Project Specialist with extensive experience designing projects with a focus on public-private partnerships and economic growth.
She has served overseas for USAID in Colombia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Nepal. Prior to USAID, she worked for the American Red Cross, UNICEF, and Habitat for Humanity International serving in Indonesia, India, and Fiji.
The Alliance
