Speaker biographies

Melanie L. Fein recently resumed her own financial institutions law practice after three years at Goodwin Procter LLP, where she was a partner in the firm’s business law department. From 1986–99, Ms. Fein was a partner in the law firm of Arnold & Porter, where she advised the firm’s financial institution clients and headed its bank mutual funds practice. From 1979–86, Ms. Fein was an attorney and senior counsel to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. While at the Federal Reserve, she served on the legislative drafting committee for the Bush Task Force on Bank Regulatory Reform. Ms. Fein taught courses on banking and financial services law at Yale Law School, where she was a visiting lecturer from 1992–2002. She also served on the adjunct faculty of Boston University Law School and the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America. Ms. Fein is a past chair of the executive council of the Federal Bar Association’s Banking Law Committee and has held leadership roles on committees of the American Bar Association. She served on advisory boards for the Practising Law Institute; Consumer Bankers Association; Banking Policy Report; Stanford Journal of Law, Business & Finance; and other organizations and publications. Ms. Fein is the author of numerous articles on financial services law and the following treatises published by Aspen Publishers: Securities Activities of Banks (1993); Mutual Fund Activities of Banks (1994); Law of Electronic Banking (1999); and Banking and Financial Services: Banking, Securities, and Insurance Regulatory Guide (2006). She is the author of Federal Bank Holding Company Law (New York Law Journal Press, 2nd ed., 2001). In 2000 she authored the essay “Regulating Convergence: Towards a Uniform Framework for Banking, Insurance and Investments,” published by the Bank Administration Institute.

Ronald Gould is a senior advisor to the UK Financial Services Authority with a background in investment management and investment banking. He is also a managing partner of the Watch House Alliance consultancy and former chief executive and founder of ABG Sundal Collier, a specialist investment bank with activities in investment research, corporate finance, and asset management. Previously, Mr. Gould ran the international investment activities of AXA Investment Managers and was vice chairman of the Barclays Asset Management Group. He has built several successful investment management firms around the world and was responsible for Barclays acquisition of what is now Barclays Global Investors. He is a nonexecutive director of several firms and a trustee of Southwest Welfare Services, a UK social services nongovernmental organization.

Howell E. Jackson is the James S. Reid Jr. Professor at Harvard Law School. His research interests include financial regulation, international finance, consumer protection, federal budget policy, and Social Security reform. Mr. Jackson has served as a consultant to the U.S. Treasury Department, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. He is a member of the National Academy on Social Insurance, a trustee of the College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF) and its affiliated TIAA-CREF investment companies, a member of the panel of outside scholars for the National Bureau of Economic Research Retirement Research Center, and a senior editor for the Cambridge University Press Series on International Corporate Law and Financial Regulation. He frequently testifies before Congress and consults with government agencies on issues of financial regulation. He is co-editor of Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy (forthcoming Cambridge University Press, 2007), coauthor of Regulation of Financial Institutions (West 1999) and Analytical Methods for Lawyers (Foundation Press 2003), and author of numerous scholarly articles. Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 1989, he clerked for Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced law in Washington, DC.

Heidi M. Schooner joined the law faculty at the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America in 1993. Ms. Schooner has visited on the law faculty at Suffolk University and at George Washington University. As a practicing lawyer, she was acting general counsel of First American Metro Corp., a large Washington, DC–area bank-holding company. She also practiced in the general counsel’s office of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as an associate with a private law firm. Ms. Schooner has published numerous articles exploring the regulation of financial institutions. Her scholarship addresses issues ranging from the specific examination of the enforcement powers of bank regulators to broad scrutiny of efforts to modernize bank regulatory regimes. She teaches banking law, commercial law, contracts, and corporations.

Thomas H. Stanton is a fellow of the Center for the Study of American Government at the Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches the program’s core course for the MBA/MA in government and various graduate seminars. Mr. Stanton is a member of the board of directors of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and is past chair of the NAPA Standing Panel on Executive Organization and Management. He is a former member of the federal Senior Executive Service. As an attorney in Washington, DC, Mr. Stanton’s practice relates to the capacity of public institutions to deliver services effectively, with specialties relating to organizational and program design, federal credit and benefit programs, government enterprises, and regulatory oversight. He provides legal and policy counsel relating to the design and operation of federal programs to federal, state, local, and international organizations, and to many federal agencies and offices. Mr. Stanton has been an invited witness before many Congressional committees and subcommittees. His writings on government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and the financial markets have appeared in publications including Public Administration Review, The Administrative Law Journal, American Banker, and the Wall Street Journal. His publications include two books on GSEs: Government-Sponsored Enterprises: Mercantilist Companies in the Modern World (AEI Press, 2002) and Privatizing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks: Why and How, co-authored with Peter J. Wallison and Bert Ely (AEI Press, 2004). Mr. Stanton also edited Making Government Manageable: Executive Organization and Management in the 21st Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) with Benjamin Ginsberg, as well as Effective Government: Blueprints for Responding to the Challenge of September 11 (M. E. Sharpe Publishers, 2006).

Peter J. Wallison joined AEI in January 1999 as a resident fellow and as co-director of AEI’s program on financial market deregulation. He previously practiced banking, corporate, and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. From June 1981 to January 1985, Mr. Wallison was general counsel of the United States Treasury Department, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan administration's proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. He also served as general counsel to the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee and participated in the Treasury Department's efforts to deal with the debt held by less developed countries. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan. Between 1972 and 1976, Mr. Wallison served first as special assistant to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller when he was vice president of the United States.

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