Reg Reform expert De'Ana Dow joins OGR's financial services practice

National Journal

People

by Siddhartha Mahanta

July 31, 2010

With the passage of financial reform, Ogilvy Government Relations is turning to regulatory guru De'Ana Dow to help lead the firm's new financial services implementation practice. Dow, 54, traces her zeal for regulatory issues to a commodities course she took at Georgetown's law school. An internship in the office of then-Sen. Walter Huddleston, D-Ky., morphed into a spot on the senator's personal staff, where she assisted him with his work on the Agriculture Committee.

Her time on the Hill led to a job with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an independent agency that had been part of the Agriculture Department -- making it a popular professional destination for many former Huddleston staffers. At the CFTC, Dow gained a thorough understanding of how exchanges function and of the operational nuances of futures markets. Although the commission was not well known, its move away from agricultural commodities toward financial and energy-based products gave it an increasingly prominent place in the futures market.

Dow left the CFTC in 2002 to serve as associate vice president and counsel in the market regulation department at the National Association of Securities Dealers. Three years later, she moved on to head up the New York Mercantile Exchange's Washington office, focusing on educating staffers on the role of speculators and futures markets. "The fact that I was a regulator and could say, 'Hey, this is what I've done, I can tell you what it will mean, what the impacts are from a regulatory perspective' ... contributed to my success in that area," she says. After the Chicago Mercantile Exchange bought Nymex in 2008, Dow became heavily involved in the proposed financial regulation reform bill, reviewing drafts and identifying issues of interest to the CME, as well as offering revisions to language.

Now that the measure has become law, Dow says that the CFTC, the Federal Communications Commission, and other agencies have been given considerable discretion. She will focus on how those agencies' new rule-makings under the law affect Ogilvy's clients, and make sure that their voices are heard.