Sharon Brown-Hruska, PhD

Dr. Brown-Hruska has served as a damages and liability expert in various matters, including cases involving regulatory requirements and compliance, proper treatment of customer funds, and losses arising from a broker-dealer and futures commission merchant (FCM) bankruptcy. She has testified as an expert in arbitrations before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on securities regulatory requirements and industry practices in cases involving fund and asset management of portfolios and structures including CDS, MBS, CMBS, and CDOs; subordination and asset structure; disclosure requirements; rating standards; and valuation of complex securities and derivatives. She has served as an arbitrator for the National Futures Association and serves on the Panel of Recognized International Market Experts in Finance (P.R.I.M.E. Finance), specializing in dispute resolution and international arbitration concerning derivatives and complex transactions.

Dr. Brown-Hruska also advises clients in valuation and modeling and has conducted valuations of derivatives contracts, the trading book, and multi-asset portfolios of physical and financial assets and the entities that use them. She has evaluated contract settlement procedures and pricing mechanisms for over the counter (OTC) transactions and derivatives contracts in credit, interest rates, currency, and commodities markets. She has consulted on swap close-out and valued settlement amounts and damages in bankruptcy disputes and litigation and on disputes relating to the valuation of affiliate guarantees, supply and marketing arrangements, and margins and fees in physical and structured deals in disputes in transfer pricing and tax cases.

Dr. Brown-Hruska is the former Chief Economist for the Department of State (2019–2021) and served as Commissioner (2002–2006) and Acting Chairman (2004–2005) of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). While at the CFTC, Dr. Brown-Hruska served as a member of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets and the President's Corporate Fraud Task Force and played a leadership role in cooperative enforcement with national and international authorities. She worked closely with staff attorneys and the CFTC Office of Cooperative Enforcement to facilitate interagency actions, including the prosecution of manipulation and fraudulent Ponzi schemes in foreign currency, energy, and other commodities. Working with other agencies, she led the agency's efforts in the development of anti-money laundering (AML) and "Know Your Customer" requirements and was a leading member of the Financial Literacy and Education Commission.

Dr. Brown-Hruska has been a Professor in Tulane University's Energy Institute and a Visiting Professor of Finance in Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business. She has lectured widely on investments and regulation and published in applied and scholarly publications including the Capital Markets Law Review, Barron's, Regulation, and Journal of Futures Markets. Dr. Brown-Hruska is also the lead author of “New Regulations for Securitizations and Asset-Backed Securities” in The Handbook of Mortgage-Backed Securities (Frank J. Fabozzi, ed., 2016).