Meet Our Team
Our team possesses expertise within financial services, capital markets, broker dealer regulation, financial technology, and cryptocurrency/blockchain technologies. Our team’s depth of experience stems from years of experience within financial services, law, broker dealer and fund compliance, business and policy strategy, and advisory boards.
Our unique perspectives and years of hands-on experience allow us to apply practical knowledge to a wide range of liquidity issues. Collectively, we have worked in-house across a range of financial services companies in both the traditional and digital securities space. Our team has been instrumental in the enactment of legislation benefiting private issuers, especially with respect to secondary liquidity.
Annemarie Tierney
Annemarie Tierney
Annemarie Tierney is the Founder and Principal of Liquid Advisors. Previously, she was the Chief Strategy Officer and General Counsel of Templum, Inc., a registered broker dealer/alternative trading system approved to conduct primary offerings and secondary trading in unregistered digital securities. Annemarie is a seasoned financial services lawyer/strategist with substantial SEC, law firm, and in-house legal experience, as well as experienced in broker dealer regulation, blockchain legal and regulatory issues, securities transactional work, SEC rules and regulations, corporate governance, and international expansion.
Annemarie has led a broad range of regulatory and legislative thought leadership initiatives in the private issuer space and is a frequent speaker on a range of private market topics. Previously, she served as Head of Strategy at Nasdaq Private Market and as the General Counsel of SecondMarket, Inc., now Digital Currency Group. She has also worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, the NYSE and NYFIX, Inc.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of SEC Alumni and a former member of the SEC’s Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. She also serves on the Advisory Boards of the HackFund Group, Pontoro, Inc. and Astrella, Inc. She earned her BA/BS in Finance and International Relations from the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware and her JD from the Catholic University of America. Annemarie is also FINRA series 7 and 24 licensed.
Charles Kessler
Charles Kessler
Charles Kessler is a senior compliance professional with over 25 years of financial industry experience. He has a proven track record of effectively implementing knowledge of rules and regulations to ensure a strict compliance culture in which business growth and profitability can thrive. In his most recent position as CCO/Chief AML Officer at SecondMarket, Inc. he was responsible for ensuring adherence to SEC, FINRA and MSRB Rules. Additionally, while there he developed policies and procedures for the trading of virtual currency. Prior to that, he was SVP/Compliance Officer at BNY ConvergEx Group, CCO/AML Officer at NYFIX, Inc. and served in similar capacities at the Bear Stearns Companies/JPM Securities as well as Cuttone and Co. He started his career at the NYSE in the Market Surveillance Group. He is currently a registered FINRA Arbitrator and has held Series 7, 12, 14, 24 and 63 licenses.
>Connect with Charles on LinkedIn
Sarah English
Sarah English
Sarah has more than ten years of in-house legal experience in the technology and financial services industries and is skilled at implementing and maintaining programs, policies and procedures to ensure observance with regulations and best practices.
Sarah previously served as Investment Management Counsel for WisdomTree Asset Management, Inc., an international family of exchange traded funds (ETFs), for over seven years. In that role she gained significant experience in fund formation and maintenance, such as the ongoing disclosures required by the SEC under the Investment Advisors Act, and the Investment Company Act of 1940. Additionally, she was responsible for compliance with exchange listing standards in the United States and abroad, execution of periodic corporate governance obligations of approximately 100 funds and several US and international legal entities, as well as the establishment of several processes and record keeping systems.
Prior to WisdomTree, Sarah was a member of the legal team at NYFIX, Inc., a financial technology company, where she had responsibility for ongoing public company reporting obligations, including section 16 reporting, and identifying best practices in corporate governance and maintaining employee data.
>Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn