U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Heath P. Tarbert has named Dorothy D. DeWitt, to serve as Director of the Division of Market Oversight.
In her role, Ms. DeWitt will be responsible for the CFTC’s supervision of derivatives platforms and swap data repositories, including the evaluation of new platform-traded products.
“I am excited Dorothy will soon be joining our team,” said Chairman Tarbert. “She brings to the CFTC more than 20 years of private sector experience in the financial services and legal fields. Her strong investment, risk, legal, and compliance background and familiarity with distributed ledger technology, including crypto assets, will be invaluable as the agency looks to develop a holistic approach to regulating 21st Century commodities.”
“I also want to thank Dorothy’s predecessor, Amir Zaidi, for his more than nine years of service at the CFTC,” added Chairman Tarbert. “We wish him all the best as he begins an exciting new chapter. I also deeply appreciate Vince McGonagle’s current leadership of the Division in an acting capacity. A CFTC veteran for two decades, Vince is among the very best career professionals in the regulatory community.”
Ms. DeWitt will join the CFTC from Coinbase, a cryptocurrency company, where she serves as Vice President and General Counsel for Business Lines and Markets. She previously served in senior legal and compliance roles for Citadel Securities, a broker-dealer and swaps dealer provisionally-registered with the CFTC, and S&P Global, and as an attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Ms. DeWitt spent nearly a decade in an investment capacity as a portfolio manager of alternative investment funds that relied heavily on derivatives and swaps. At Cadogan Management, Ms. DeWitt served as a partner and portfolio manager who co-led the investment group, before transitioning to become general counsel. Prior to that, she served at GAM in London, a global fund of hedge funds as the portfolio manager for the GAM Multi-Arbitrage Fund, managing arbitrage, credit, event-driven and fixed-income investments. Before that, she served as a research analyst at a merger arbitrage and event-driven hedge fund at ING Furman Selz. Before her career in the private sector, Ms. DeWitt clerked for United States District Court Judge John E. Sprizzo in the Southern District of New York.
Ms. DeWitt is a graduate of Harvard Law School, cum laude, and the University of Texas at Austin, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, where she received a B.A. (Plan II). Ms. DeWitt is also a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) and admitted to practice law in New York. Ms. DeWitt grew up in Texas and Georgia on family farms that produced corn, maize, and beef cattle. She served as president of her local youth 4-H club, and worked during college in the poultry processing industry in Gainesville, Georgia, the poultry capital of the world.
