Ripple Labs is pleased to announce that Michael S. Barr, a former U.S. Department of the Treasury official, has joined the advisory board.
Barr is the Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Proffitt Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and the Faculty Director of the Center on Finance, Law and Policy. He also serves on a number of private sector, government, and nonprofit advisory boards, including the FDIC Committee on Economic Inclusion, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and the U.S. Financial Diaries Project. He is also a fellow at the Filene Research Institute.
“I’m excited to be joining the Advisory Board of Ripple Labs,” said Barr. “Our global payments system is badly outdated. I think innovation in payments can help make the financial system safer, reduce cost, and improve access and efficiency for consumers and businesses alike.”
Prior to joining the Ripple Labs advisory board, Barr served the U.S. Department of the Treasury as special advisor to President Clinton, and as the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President Obama.
As a key architect of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, Barr made significant changes to U.S. financial regulations to protect American taxpayers.
As a company applying a new technology in an age-old, heavily regulated industry, Ripple Labs greatly benefits from the prodigious policy expertise of advisors like Barr.
“I am excited to welcome Michael to the Ripple Labs team,” said Ripple Labs CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen. “He has spent his entire career in pursuit of a more equitable and efficient financial system — within government, as an academic, and with many of today’s leading financial innovators. We will lean on his insights and expertise as we continue to build Ripple into a critical piece of the world’s financial technology infrastructure.”
