Sandra is a proponent for ‘human-centric tech’. From investment banking and currency markets to blockchain technology, she is an early investor and advocate of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.
She currently serves as the CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council, the largest and leading Swiss-based non-for-profit association with 500+ institutional members, 178 ambassadors, across 95 jurisdictions and discipline. She advances innovation and inclusion as an angel investor, board director, advisor, and cofounder of social impact and tech start-ups. She speaks and writes about fintech, blockchain, crypto assets, digitization, responsible innovation, prudent regulation and policies across traditional and crypto media. She serves as Board Director of GBBC Digital Finance, BitGive Foundation, Yale Alumni Health Network, SendFriend, PoA Studios and advisor for Filecoin Foundation and others.
In 2019, she was appointed as the Senate representative of the New York State Digital Currency Task Force, and serves on the AIFC Fintech Council (Kazakhstan), World Economic Forum’s Digital Currencies Governance Consortium, International Securities Services Association’s (ISSA) DLT & ISO Standards, GI Trust FATF Travel Rule Standards Task Force (South Korea), Digital Dollar Project Advisory Board (USA), Salesforce’s Web3 Advisory Board, GBBC’s Global Standards Mapping Initiative, Post Trade Distributed Ledger and InterWork Alliance Leadership Councils. Sandra was a founding member of many of the earliest blockchain associations including Hyperledger Foundation, The Linux Foundation and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA).
Whilst at CME Group, she headed FX & Metals Research & Product Development and founded a new business unit, Digitization. Sandra and her team created the CME CF Bitcoin pricing index and reference rate, CME Bitcoin Futures, and post trade, clearing and settlement solutions as well as filing the first crypto derivatives patents with the USPTO. Sandra was one of the first corporate digital asset pioneers to recognize the potential of this technology and its many applications; she presented at the one of the first CFTC Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) on the potential of blockchain technology in February 2016. Previously, she was a London-based derivatives banker at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank in the foreign exchange and interest rate markets.
Sandra holds a M.B.A. from London Business School, studied Computer Science at Columbia University, School of Continuing Studies and earned a double B.A. degree from Yale University. She is a frequent guest lecturer at universities discussing topics from fintech to data privacy and harnessing emerging technologies to solve real world problems. She is often asked to give witness in private testimony to governments around the world and most recently, public testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry Committee hearing on ‘Examining Digital Assets: Risks, Regulation and Innovation’ (February 2022).
