ABOUT
Sarah Hammer is a senior financial services, technology, and regulatory executive with 25+ years of global leadership across government, academia, and multi-trillion-dollar financial institutions.
Sarah is Executive Director at the Wharton School and Chair of Wharton Future of Finance, architecting and driving strategic financial sector initiatives. She is also CEO of Wharton Cypher Accelerator, leading all aspects of scaling pre-seed to late-stage companies.
She is also Adjunct Professor at Penn Law School, Academic Director of Penn Law Programs on AI and Digital Assets, and Affiliated Scholar at the Penn Program on Regulation.
Sarah is Co-Chair of the International Expert Consortium on AI. She is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and was unanimously confirmed to the American Inn of Court. She serves as an advisor to the World Economic Forum, the Dubai International Finance Centre, and the MENA Fintech Network.
Sarah was previously Managing Director of the Center for Innovation in Finance and Senior Director of the Alternative Investments Program at Wharton. She quarterbacked Penn’s first digital asset, unique 3D IP memorializing Nobel Prize-winning scientific invention. She also led development of AI models to evaluate banking liquidity and lending risk.
Sarah was Acting Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities and successfully led the agency through the 2023 banking crisis. The Department regulates and supervises ~290,000 bank and non-bank financial entities, totaling $3.5 trillion in AUM.
Sarah was also Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at US Treasury, where she led the Office of Financial Institutions, the Federal Insurance Office, and the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Compliance Policy (cybersecurity).
Sarah served on the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) board and was principal staff to the Treasury Secretary for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). She also served five years on the board of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the specialized global agency for ICT and infrastructure.
Sarah has held leadership positions throughout financial services in general management, portfolio management, trading, marketing, research, and analytics at the Vanguard Group, PIMCO, JP Morgan Chase, BlackRock, and Tudor Investments.
Sarah earned a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, an MBA from the Wharton School, and a Master of Studies from Oxford University.
