The Honorable Juan Zarate is the global co-managing partner and chief strategy officer for the global consulting firm, K2 Integrity. He is also the co-founder and Chair of the Board of Consilient, an innovative new fintech.
Mr. Zarate is a Trustee, board member, and Audit Committee Chair for Northwestern Mutual. He serves on the board of Guardian Space Technology Solutions, and since 2014, Mr. Zarate has served as an independent adviser to Coinbase, the largest virtual asset service provider in the United States.
He is the chairman and co-founder of the Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Class of 1971 Senior Fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. He is currently an advisor to the National Security Institute, the Harvard National Security Journal, FDD’s Center on Cyber & Technology Innovation, and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
He was a visiting lecturer in law at the Harvard Law School for eight years and is a published author, including his books “Treasury’s War” (2013) and “Forging Democracy” (1994). Mr. Zarate was appointed by Pope Francis twice to sit on the board of the Vatican’s Supervisory
and Financial Information Authority; sat on the boards of Boston Dynamics and Cambridge Quantum Computing North America; and for seven years, he was the U.S. advisor on HSBC’s Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee and remains an advisor to HSBC’s Group Risk Committee. For fourteen years, Zarate was a senior national security analyst for CBS News and later NBC News.
Mr. Zarate has served on multiple commissions and task forces, including the CSIS Commission on Countering Violent Extremism; CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security; the Council on Foreign Relation’s Independent Task Force on North Korea; the Center for A New American Security’s Future of U.S. Sanctions Task Force; and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism.
Mr. Zarate served as the deputy assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for combating terrorism from 2005 to 2009, where he was responsible for developing and implementing the U.S. counterterrorism strategy as well as policies related to weapons of mass destruction/terrorism, transnational security threats, maritime security, international energy infrastructure protection, hostage-taking, anti-money laundering, kleptocracy, and transnational organized crime. He was responsible for conceiving and leading major initiatives in the post 9/11 period, including the establishment of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT).
Questions? Contact Us Any Time:
805.965.1400
info@bigspeak.com
He was the first ever Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes. In this role, he led the post-9/11 anti-money laundering and sanctions regime expansion in the United States; helped develop the international standards for AML/CFT and proliferation finance; supervised the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the Treasury’s Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture (TEOAF); drove the innovative use of the Treasury’s national security–related powers and ultimately led the establishment of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). He has also led some of the largest asset recovery ventures in history, including the return of over $3 billion in Iraqi assets. He was awarded the Treasury Medal.
Mr. Zarate is a former federal terrorism prosecutor prior to 9/11, serving on the prosecution teams in the East Africa bombings and USS Cole cases, among others. He is magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School. At Harvard College, he won the John P. Reardon Award, as the best male student athlete. He was a Rotary Scholar at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. In 2002, he was inducted into Mater Dei High’s School’s Ring of Honor.