Ex-Fed Joins Ripple Labs as General Counsel

Payment exchange network Ripple Labs recently appointed Norman Reed as its general counsel.

A law graduate from Columbia University, Reed started his career at a large international firm where he worked for three years. He later joined the prestigious Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he got to know Karen Gifford — Ripple Labs’s Chief Compliance Officer, also a former New York Fed.

“In the wake of BCCI — along with some other shifty things happening in the early 1990s in the banking industry — the Fed wanted to start up an enforcement group styled after the SEC enforcement group,” Reed said on Ripple Labs blogpost. “That’s where Karen and I worked along with half a dozen other attorneys.”

After being a Fed for about six and a half years, Reed found himself at Washington DC where he worked at SEC office until 2007. His last post was at OMGEO where he provided his expertise as a general counsel.

Roads to Ripple Labs

As Reed explained, it was Karen who influenced him to join Ripple Labs. “My hope was that I could find a company that was building financial technology for the future that would appreciate my legal and regulatory background,” he said.

“As it turned out, Karen asked to see me last winter when she was in New York and told me about Ripple. I thought to myself—this sounds exactly like what I’m looking for.”

A “Chessmaster” at Ripple Labs

Ripple Labs calls Norman Reed a chessmaster, who will protect them from facing legal difficulties that could emerge from the amalgamation of finance and technology. As we see the company’s past, it has been trying single-heartedly to follow preset laws and orders. For instance, Ripple Labs has earlier joined W3C Web Payment Interest Group to help bring universal standards to online payment sector.

With an ex-Fed chairing as their legal mentor, Ripple Labs is hopeful to build an ideal framework where regulations and innovations could coexist peacefully.