ECB Legal Conference 2025 – Speakers

Programme of the ECB Legal Conference 2025

He is Associate Director – Research Programmes of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at Cambridge University Judge Business School, and the Kerry Holdings Professor in Law and RGC Senior Research Fellow in Digital Finance and Sustainable Development at the University of Hong Kong. At HKU, he is a Senior Fellow of the Asia Global Institute, Associate Director of the HKU-Standard Chartered Foundation FinTech Academy, a Member of the Management Committee of the Techno-Entrepreneurship Core, and Faculty Director of the Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship Programme (LITE). Douglas also holds the Sir Roy Goode Chair at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London. He is a non-executive director of NASDAQ-listed early-stage biotechnology development firm Aptorum Group, a Senior Fellow of the Program on International Financial Systems and of the University of Melbourne School of Law, a PRIME Finance Expert, an Advisory Board Member of the European Banking Institute, SuperCharger Ventures, Policy 4.0, Alliance for Innovative Regulation, Digital Education Council, and Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), and co-founder of the Asia Pacific Structured Finance Association. He leads the largest FinTech online course on edX, now with over 130,000 participants drawn from (almost) every country in the world. Douglas has published twenty books and more than 200 articles, chapters and reports on finance, technology, regulation and development, including most recently FinTech: Finance, Technology, Regulation (Cambridge University Press 2024, with Ross Buckley and Dirk Zetzsche). Douglas has worked with governments, central banks, financial regulators and international organisations around the world on strategies to support financial sector development.

She joined the Spanish Central Bank in 2004 and previously worked in the Legal Department of a Spanish bank (Bankinter) and on the Brussels office of a Spanish Lawfirm (Garrigues). Lucía has a Law Degree from Universidad Complutense (Madrid), a double LLM in EU Law from the College of Europe (Bruges) and San Pablo CEU (Madrid) and an LLM in Telecom and New Technologies Law from Instituto de Empresa (Madrid). She is also a member of the European Central Bank Legal Committee (LEGCO), of the Committee on International Monetary Law of the International Law Association (MOCOMILA), of the Advisory Board of the European Banking Institute and the Advisory Committee of the Banking Law Section of the Madrid Bar Association.

Lawyer by education, she started her professional career in the private sector as independent attorney-at-law before joining the European Commission in 2002, where she has been working in policy coordination, policy development, and enforcement of EU law, first in the field of public procurement and since 2010 in the field of financial services and capital movements. In the financial services field, she followed closely the implementation of the financial reform in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In her current position, she is in charge of developing and coordinating the strategy for the engagement with third country jurisdictions.

From 2011 to 2023, she served as Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court, in its First Senate. She received honorary doctorates from the universities of Michigan, Hasselt, Lucerne and Linz, and is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the European Academy.

She has taught at CEU Budapest, Linz, and Toronto. At Humboldt University, she was Vice President, founded the Law & Society Institute Berlin and the Humboldt Law Clinic on Fundamental and Human Rights. She presides over the Advisory Board of the national Foundation Forum Recht and works on comparative constitutional law, anti-discrimination law and critical/socio-legal studies.

She is the author of EU Employment Law (Oxford, OUP, 2012, 5th ed.), The Substantive Law of the EU: The Four Freedoms, (Oxford, OUP, 2025, 8th ed), and (with Peers ed), European Union Law (Oxford, OUP, 2023, 4th ed). She is a member of the European Commission funded European Labour Law Network (ELLN). She is a Senior Fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe where she considers the legal issues around migration, together with the legal and constitutional issues associated with Brexit, in particular the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. She has appeared on the main media channels - BBC, ITV and Sky - as well as some of the more specialist programmes such as Law in Action, Woman's Hour, Question Time, Any Questions and the Briefing Room. She has also written for the Guardian and the Telegraph. She has given evidence to numerous select committees on the legal issues connected with Brexit.

Between 2015 and 2020, he was Director-General of the Directorate-General for Environment and, between 2012 and 2015, of the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. Previously held other senior management positions in the European Commission, including Head of Cabinet of Vice-President of the European Commission Loyola de Palacio Commissioner responsible for Transport and Energy (2000-2004); Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Marcelino Oreja, Commissioner for Institutional Affairs, Audiovisual Policy and Relations with the European Parliament (1995-1999), and Member of the Cabinet of the President of the Commission Jacques Santer.

He joined the Commission in 1986 as a member of its Legal Service, after passing the opposition process. Previously, he was a legal adviser to Procter and Gamble Spain between 1984 and 1986. In addition, Mr Calleja has worked with various academic institutions to teach and lecture at universities and academics in Europe and also in the United States. He is co-author of several publications, including ‘70 years of EU law’ (2022) - which is a collaborative project of the Legal Service of the European Commission, reflecting the principles and foundations of the European Union legal order over the past 70 years, as well as numerous articles on European law and Community policies.

Mr Calleja holds a degree in Law and Business Sciences from the Pontificia University of Comillas (ICADE E3) and completed his studies at the City of London Polytechnic (London) and the Complutense University of Madrid where he specialised in European Business Law and EU Law respectively. 

He is responsible for the Directorate General International and European Relations, the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments and the Directorate Banknotes. He also chairs the Eurosystem High-Level Task Force on Digital Euro, the Euro Retail Payments Board and the Euro Cyber Resilience Board for pan-European Financial Infrastructures.

Before joining the ECB, Mr Cipollone was Deputy Governor of the Banca d’Italia and a member of the Board of the Italian Institute for the Supervision of Insurance. He also served as a member of the Coordination Group for the Cross-border payments programme at the Bank for International Settlements. He previously served as an Executive Director on the Board of the World Bank Group.

Mr Cipollone is the author of several books. His papers have been published in international journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of the European Economic Association and the Journal of Policy Modeling. 

Law Degree, University of Salamanca (Spain). LL.M College of Europe, Bruges.

From 2016 to 2023 he was Director at the Legal Service of the Council of the EU, in the directorate dealing with economic, financial and EU budget affairs, where he was Legal Advisor to Ecofin and to the Euro Group, to the Economic and Financial Committee and to the Eurogroup Working Group.

In his current and past attributions, he has been responsible for legal advise in different issues such as different sectors of the internal market (financial services, banking union, digital policy, the fundamental freedoms), and economic governance, including the ESM Treaty, the multiannual financial perspectives, the Next Generation EU, as well as the new mechanism on budgetary conditionality/rule of law.

He has represented the Commission, the Council and the European Council before the Court of Justice (for instance, in cases Pringle, Banco Popular cases, and the actions brought by Poland and Hungary against the new mechanism on budgetary conditionality/rule of law).

He is frequent speaker in conferences and seminars (f.i., institutional rapporteur of the 2016 FIDE congress, EU law seminars at the University of Berkeley, USA). He publishes frequently in EU law academic reviews (such as the Common Market Law Review) and collective works (most recently, The EU law of economic and monetary Union, Oxford University Press, 2020 and EU law in times of pandemic, EU law live press). 

His main fields of research and publications: the constitutional law of the European Union; relations between international, European and national law; protection of fundamental rights in Europe; the rights of minorities, language law and cultural diversity in Europe; internal market law and non-market values; decision-making and legal instruments of EU law.

He has previously worked as a référendaire at the Court of Justice of the European Union, and held research positions at the European University Institute (Max Weber Fellowship), Maastricht University (PhD Fellowship), KULeuven and the Hertie School of Governance (visiting researcher), and NYU Law (Hauser Global Scholarship). He holds degrees in law and European studies from the Catholic University of Louvain, the College of Europe and NYU Law, and a joint doctorate cum laude from Maastricht University and the KULeuven.

His research primarily focuses on EU institutional law, economic governance and the EMU. His most recent work has appeared in the Common Market Law Review, the European Constitutional Law Review, the Revue trimestrielle de droit européen and Politics and Governance. He is the author of The New Economic Governance of the Eurozone – A Rule of Law Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Le plan de relance NextGenerationEU de l’Union européenne – analyse constitutionnelle d’une initiative historique (Larcier, 2023).

She has worked at the European Central Bank, as well as in the Brussels interest representation sector. In November 2010 she integrated the European Commission’s Directorate for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, where she covered asset management, banking, insurance and pension matters. Since December 2024, she is member of the Cabinet of Commissioner Maria Luis Albuquerque in charge of the Savings and Investments Union.

Larisa is a graduate of the Law School of the West University of Timisoara (Romania). She holds a master’s degree in European Studies from the College of Europe Natolin (Poland) and a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence (Italy).

He is a graduate of the Institute of Political Studies and a holder of a DEA (Diplôme d'Études Approfondies) in Law from the Robert Schuman University of Strasbourg and has a first-class honours Higher Diploma in European Studies from the College of Europe, Bruges.

He joined the administration of the European Parliament in 1992; first as an administrator in the Directorate-General for Committees and Inter-parliamentary Delegations, then in the Directorate-General for the Presidency. Between 2002 and 2007, he held various advisory positions; to the Deputy Secretary-General of the Parliament; to the Director-General in charge of internal policies; and finally to the President of the European Parliament.

Mr Drexler was later Head of the secretariat of the governing bodies of the Parliament, before becoming Head of Cabinet for the Secretary-General in 2009. He joined the Legal Service in 2012 as Director for Legislative Affairs.

As Jurisconsult of the European Parliament, he plays the key role of advising the Institution on legal issues and representing it in legal proceedings before the Union and national courts.

He joined UCL in 2012, before which he was Director of the Centre of European Law at King's College London (1998-2012). He studied law (lic.iur.) and European law (lic.Eur.iur - equivalent to LLM) at the University of Ghent, Belgium, where he also obtained his PhD degree. Before coming to London in 1998 he taught at the University of Ghent and at the University of Brussels (VUB). Between 1994 and 1998 he worked in the chambers of Advocate General Jacobs at the European Court of Justice.

Piet's research covers many areas of EU law and of international economic law. He is particularly interested in the relationships between different legal systems, national, European, and international. His research examines the legal effect of WTO law in EU law, the application of EU human-rights standards in national law, and means to connecting and integrating legal systems so as to combat legal fragmentation. Piet is a leading authority in EU law and international economic law.

He is the author of EU External Relations Law and co-editor of the Yearbook of European Law, and of the Oxford EU Law Library (all Oxford University Press). He has also published papers on EU constitutional law, human rights law, internal market law, judicial protection, state aid law, and on various questions of WTO law. He is currently launching a new open-access journal - Europe and the World - A Law Review - together with Prof Christina Eckes (Amsterdam) and Dr Anne Thies (Reading) to be published by UCL Press.

He co-chairs the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Risks of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Mr Elderson previously served as Executive Director of De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). At DNB he held several senior positions before joining its Governing Board in 2011.

Before joining DNB in 1999, Mr Elderson worked as a lawyer specialising in EU competition law.

Throughout his career, Frank Elderson has stressed the importance of climate and environment related considerations for the financial sector and for supervisors and central banks.

He founded and chaired the Dutch Platform for Sustainable Finance from 2016 to 2020 and from 2018 to 2022 he served as the first Chair of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a network he helped creating and expanding.

Mr Elderson graduated in Dutch law at the University of Amsterdam in 1994 and obtained an LL.M. Degree at Columbia Law School, New York, in 1995. He also studied various courses at the University of Zaragoza, Spain.

Her research is focused on the enforcement of European law before national and EU courts. She does research specifically on the theme of access to court before national and European courts (with a special focus on environmental matters), on the Europeanisation process of national procedural administrative law and on the judicial review of the new modes of governance. She studied law at the University of Teramo (1997-2001) and of Maastricht (2001-2002). In 2008 she finalised her PhD on ‘Europeanisation of Administrative Justice? The influence of the ECJ’s case law in Italy, Germany and England’ at Maastricht University. The thesis was awarded a special distinction by the European Public Law Group. Between 2008 and 2015 she has been working as an Assistant Professor of European Administrative Law in the department of Public Law and in 2016 she became Associate Professor. She carries out research on the enforcement of European law before national and European courts, with a special focus on shared administration, environmental law and the new modes of governance. She coordinates courses of European and comparative administrative law.

Born in Famagusta (Cyprus), Mr Nicholas Emiliou studied at the l’Ethniko kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece) from which he graduated in law in 1986. He continued his studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (London, UK) where he obtained an LL.M. in European law in 1987. In 1991, he was awarded a doctorate in law by University College London (UK). He began his academic career at that university where he worked as a research associate from 1988 to 1991. He then took up teaching duties in EU law at the University of Southampton (UK) from 1991 to 1993, and then at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London (UK) from 1993 to 1994. Between 1995 and 1997, he held the Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration at the University of Durham (UK). From 1994 to 1997, while carrying on those activities, Mr Emiliou was also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London, also acting as Special Adviser to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Cyprus. Between 1997 and 1998, he was Minister Plenipotentiary at the EU Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus and then, from 1998 to 1999, Deputy Permanent Delegate of the Republic of Cyprus to the European Union. From 1999 to 2002, Mr Emiliou was Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary of the Republic of Cyprus to Ireland. Between 2002 and 2004, he was Permanent Representative of the Republic of Cyprus to the Council of Europe and Representative of the Government of Cyprus in cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights. In 2004, he was appointed as Permanent Representative of the Republic of Cyprus to the European Union and held that office until 2008. Mr Emiliou was then appointed as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus, a position which he held until 2012. Between 2012 and 2017, he became Permanent Representative of the Republic of Cyprus to the United Nations in New York, before returning to his role as Permanent Representative of the Republic of Cyprus to the European Union from 2017 to 2021. He also served on the Panel of Arbitrators of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague (Netherlands) from 1995 to 2016.

Visiting Professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University of Toruń since 2020, she holds a PhD in Comparative Public Law (University of Siena) and has been Max Weber post-doctoral fellow in Law (2013-2015), at the EUI. Holder of a Jean Monnet Module 2016-2019 ‘Parliamentary accountability and technical expertise: Budgetary Powers, Information and Communication Technologies and Elections’ (PATEU), until January 2024 she has been the coordinator at Luiss research unit of the Horizon Europe Project RED-SPINEL. She was member of the Steering Committee of the ECPR Research Network on Differentiated Integration in the EU (2021-2023) and she is currently the co-coordinator of the Research Group on ‘Judicial Review and Electoral Law’ of the International Association of Constitutional Law. Cristina works on topics related to economic governance, constitutional adjudication and democratic accountability in between EU and national constitutional law. She has been Visiting Scholar at the Victoria University of Wellington, Georgetown Law Center, Uppsala University, Complutense University, the University of Copenhagen, Durham Law School.

Ms Guetcheva-Cheytanova joined the BIS in 2020 as Deputy General Counsel, providing legal advice on a broad range of issues. Before joining the BIS, she served as Director, Chief Counsel Corporate at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and also worked at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. She holds a Master of Law degree and a Master of International Economic Relations degree from the University of National and World Economy (Bulgaria) and a Master of Law degree from the University of London.

After studying law with a supplementary education in economics at the University of Bayreuth (First State Examination in 1999), he completed a one-year Master's program in European and international economic law at the University of London (LL.M. 2000). In 2002, Prof. Dr. Herrmann obtained his doctorate in European law from the University of Bayreuth and passed the Second State Examination in Bavaria in 2005. From 2003 to 2009, Prof. Dr. Herrmann was a postdoctoral researcher at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, where he qualified for a professorship in early 2009. In 2006-2007, he was a Post-Doc Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. In 2008, he held acting professorships at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and the University of Passau, where he was appointed Tenured University Professor in 2009. From 2017 to 2020, Prof. Dr. Herrmann was a candidate select of the EU for the position of a WTO Appellate Body Member. He is listed as a potential arbitrator under both the EU/UK withdrawal agreement and EU trade agreements.

He then joined the European Commission where he worked first in the Cyprus Unit in DG Enlargement before becoming a member of the Commission Legal Service (external relations and institutional team). From 2010 to 2014 he acted as Deputy Head of Cabinet of the EU Trade Commissioner De Gucht, and as of 2015 he was Head of Unit dealing with anti-dumping at DG Trade. He joined the European External Action Service in November 2021 as Director of the Legal Department. He teaches EU external relations law at the Free University of Brussels and has written extensively on EU and international law matters. He edited (together with J Wouters, G Debaere and T Ramopoulos) The Law of EU External Relations - Cases, Materials and Commentary on the EU as an International Legal Actor (Oxford, OUP, third edition 2021).

In this role, George oversees the Legal Directorate’s advice relating to the Bank’s financial stability functions as the UK resolution authority, supervisor of systemic financial market infrastructures and macro-prudential authority, as well as the Bank’s markets and payments operations as a central bank, banknote issuance and the internal affairs and governance of the Bank. Prior to joining the Bank, George was a member of the financial regulation team at Freshfields in London. George is admitted as a solicitor in England & Wales and an attorney in New York. He completed his education at Trinity College Dublin (LLB), KU Leuven (Erasmus) and Georgetown University (LLM).

Since October 2003, she has been responsible for approximately 1500 cases and has delivered around 600 opinions, including important opinions in the banking sector such as, for example: C 663/17P, C 665/17P and C 669/17P, ECB and Others v Trasta Komercbanka and Others; C 202/18, Rimšēvičs v Latvia and C 238/18, ECB v Latvia; C 316/19, Commission v Slovenia (ECB archives); C 3/20, LR Ģenerālprokuratūra; C 202/21P, ABLV Bank v SRB; C 750/21P and C 256/22P, Pilatus Bank v ECB; C 181/22P, Nemea Bank v ECB and Others; C 777/22P, ECB v Corneli and C 789/22P, Commission v Corneli. Prior to joining the Court, Advocate General Kokott was a professor at the universities of Augsburg, Heidelberg, Düsseldorf and St. Gallen, an interim professor at the University of Mannheim and a visiting professor at Berkeley Law. Furthermore, she was a Deputy Judge for the Federal Government at the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and a Deputy Chairperson of the Federal Government’s Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). Advocate General Kokott is a graduate of the universities of Bonn, American University/Washington D.C., Heidelberg and the Harvard Law School. She has authored and co-authored a broad variety of publications on European law and public international law, as well as on EU economic, tax and competition law. She is also an editor of the Frankfurter Kommentar on Competition Law and of the Liber Amicorum for Dirk Schroeder on European, German and International Competition Law. Moreover, Advocate General Kokott has actively initiated and organized several high-level expert conferences and symposia.

Before joining the ECB, he was the Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland. He has also chaired the Advisory Scientific Committee and Advisory Technical Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board and was Whately Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin. He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he was awarded a PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 1995 and was Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University from 1995 to 1997, before returning to Dublin. In 2001 he was the inaugural recipient of the Bernácer Prize for outstanding contributions to European monetary economics.

His main interest lies in international and comparative aspects of financial law, both from a regulatory and from a private law viewpoint, as well as cross-border dispute resolution. He has published extensively on these topics. Matthias is regularly invited to teach at Sorbonne University, the University of Fribourg and the University of Lausanne, and has been a visiting academic at the London School of Economics and Political Science, at Oxford University and at Stanford University. He is a member of the European Law Institute, the American Law Institute, the Academia Europaea and the European Banking Institute. Matthias has participated in the European Commission’s Expert Group on Conflict of Laws Regarding Securities and Claims, and in various working groups of the UK Financial Markets Law Committee, UNIDROIT and the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), inter alia on digital assets and digital tokens.

She advises the IMF’s Executive Board, management, staff, and country membership on all legal aspects of the Fund’s operations, including its lending, surveillance, capacity development, regulatory and advisory functions. Ms. Liu has led the Legal Department’s work on a range of policy, country, and strategic issues, including reforms to IMF lending policies; legal frameworks for central banking and financial sector in response to technological changes; and corporate and household insolvency. She has also contributed to work on sovereign debt and enforcement, and to the development of international standards for financial regulation. Ms. Liu is widely published on various aspects of the law, and policy perspectives on areas such as private debt, sovereign debt restructuring, and good governance.

From 2020 to 2025, he was Board Member and Director of Resolution Planning and Decisions at the Single Resolution Board.

He has worked in financial regulation and supervision for more than 20 years. He was the Director of Legal Services and Chief Legal Counsel at Banco de Portugal, where he has also previously served as Deputy Director of the Prudential Supervision Department. A Portuguese national, he was the Minister of Finance’s Chief of Staff between 2011 and 2013 and has worked before in the Legal Services of the European Central Bank. From 2012 to 2015, Pedro was a non-resident member of the European Investment Bank’s Board of Directors. He holds a law degree from the Lisbon School of Law and has done post-graduate studies in European Law at the European University Institute. 

Ms Medina obtained a master’s degree in international maritime law in 1995 and was awarded a master’s degree in European law in 2002. From 1995 to 2004, she worked in the Latvian Ministry of Transport. As from 2004, Ms Medina held the position of Deputy Head of the European Affairs Office at the State Chancellery of the Republic of Latvia before joining the Latvian Ministry of Justice as Director of the Policy Planning Department in 2005. From 2009 until 2021, she worked in the Ministry of Justice as Deputy State Secretary for Legal Policy. Ms Medina’s career also includes teaching activities on EU law in Latvia and beyond. Ms Medina was appointed as an Advocate General at the Court of Justice on 7 October 2021.

He has previously been member of the ECOFIN and Institutional Directorates of the same Service. In these roles he has been involved in providing legal responses to some of the most pressing crises faced by the Union in recent years: the Covid-19 pandemic, the Rule of Law Crisis, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, and the migration crisis.

In particular he was part of the group of legal advisers working on the various emergency instruments adopted to address the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and notably on the financial and legal architecture of the borrowing scheme for their financing (NGEU/EURI). He has represented the Council in a number of cases before the Court of Justice, including the seminal ones on the legality of the Rule of Law conditionality Regulation, an instrument which he concurred to shape during the legislative negotiations.

He regularly engages in conferences and scientific publications. Most recently, he presented to the 2025 FIDE Congress the Institutional Report on the topic of EU Emergency Law. The report offers one of the first attempts at giving a theoretical framework to this expanding area of EU law (EU Emergency Law. XXXI FIDE Congress | Katowice 2025 Congress Publications Vol. 1 | University of Silesia Press).

He is a qualified lawyer under Italian law. He is scientific collaborator of the Institut d´études européennes of ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and visiting Professor at the Collegio Europeo affiliated to the University of Parma. 

She is currently on leave from the University of Bonn, where she has been Professor of Financial Economics since 2015. From 2014 to 2019 she served as a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. She also served as Co-Chair of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts and Vice Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee (ASC) of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB). Isabel Schnabel studied economics at the Universities of Mannheim, Paris (Sorbonne) and Berkeley. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Mannheim. Her research focuses on financial stability, banking regulation, central banking, international capital flows and economic history.

Dr. Ruth Wandhöfer has been instrumental in shaping the future of finance and money over more than 2 decades. She operates at the nexus of technology, cyber security, identity, finance and regulation and advises and speaks to International audiences on the evolution of the digital economy. After a distinguished career of over 11 years with Citi, Ruth has been an independent Non-Executive Director on various boards sine 2018. She currently sits on the Board of Permanent TSB Bank in Ireland. She is also Head of European Markets at Blackwired, a cyber security innovator. Previously she was the Chair of the UK Statutory Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) Panel and board member of the London Stock Exchange Group, Gresham Technologies, Digital Identity Net and Aquis Exchange Group. A member of the Bank of England CBDC Engagement Forum she chairs the CBDC Privacy Working Group. She is a Visiting Professor at CASS Business School (now Bayes), teaching Fintech in Banking and Finance and Digital Money. She published three books: “EU Payments Integration” (2010), “Transaction Banking and the Impact of Regulatory Change” (2014) and “Redecentralisation: Building the Digital Financial Ecosystem” (2023), all Palgrave MacMillan.

In 1989 she joined the Legal Service of the Council of Ministers in Brussels, moving to the Legal Service of the European Monetary Institute in 1995 and subsequently to the ECB as Head of Division in Legal Services in 1998, where she was appointed Director General in 2013.

Ms Zilioli holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and a PhD from the European University Institute. Since 1994 she lectures at Goethe University Frankfurt, at its Institute for Law and Finance and at the European College of Parma, Parma University. In 2016 she was appointed Professor of Law at Goethe University Frankfurt. She has published numerous articles and four books. She is also a member of the Parma Bar Association.

Chiara Zilioli has been married to Andreas Fabritius for more than 30 years; they have four children.