Alessandro Cocco is vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He oversees the Financial Markets Group, a multidisciplinary team that analyzes public policy issues in global financial markets. The group’s research on financial market institutions, technology, and infrastructure helps foster stable and efficient monetary, financial, and payments systems. Cocco plays a key role in communicating the team’s findings to senior Federal Reserve officials, other regulators, industry leaders, and the general public.

Cocco brings 25 years of legal, financial services, and leadership experience to this position. Most recently he served as managing director and associate general counsel at JPMorgan Chase, where he managed a wide range of efforts related to financial services regulation, futures, swaps, clearing, financial technology, and compliance. He has wide-ranging international experience in financial markets and regulation in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Cocco is qualified to practice law in the U.S., UK, and Italy.

Bevon Joseph is the co-founder and president of The Greenwood Project. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Joseph moved to the United States after high school to further his education. He is a graduate of DePaul University and holds a BA in IT operations management. He is also a Microsoft certified solutions expert (MCSE).

Joseph’s career has been exclusively in the trading industry, specifically in technology. He has worked at such financial institutions as JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Chicago Trading Company, Peak6 Investments, Achievement Asset Management, and many others. Joseph also worked on the trading floors of the NYSE, NYMEX, and AMEX.

In 2011 Joseph relocated to Chicago, where he started working for Peak6 Investments. In 2014 he moved on to the hedge fund Achievement Asset Management as the IT operations manager and later became the chief technical officer.

In December 2015 Joseph decided that it was time to pay it forward a bit more, which was when The Greenwood Project was born. Joseph wanted to be the catalyst for enhancing diversity in the trading industry and has since dedicated himself to this cause 100 percent. In less than three years, The Greenwood Project has introduced approximately 300 minority students from underresourced communities to the financial industry via paid summer internships, lunch and learn sessions, and a Women of Wall Street speaking series.

Joseph’s ultimate goal is to build a true diversity pipeline for minority students to enter the financial industry. From his own personal experience of more than 20 years in the financial industry, Joseph realized that sometimes you need someone on the inside to open the door for you. Joseph firmly believes that kids can’t be what they can’t see, and there is no lack of talent—only a lack of opportunity.

Rumi Morales identifies, invests, and informs the emerging technologies that will define our economy’s next generation.

An early specialist in digital currency and blockchain technologies, Morales is also a leading early investor and educator on artificial intelligence, robotics, and quantum computing as they will affect established industries and government policies. Institutional Investor magazine has noted her as one the “most powerful dealmakers in financial technology” two years in a row, and Crain’s Chicago Business recognized her in their esteemed 40 Under 40 list.

She is currently partner and head of venture at Outlier Ventures and previously led the venture arm of the CME Group. Morales also established the Global Markets Institute during her tenure at Goldman Sachs and launched a leading economic research firm in Singapore. She began her career in venture capital in London, Kuala Lumpur, and New York.

Morales is a member of the boards of the Negaunee Music Institute of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the BitGive Foundation, and serves as an advisory board member of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. She received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and her MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.

In 2017 Mel Williams, Jr. joined Chicago Trading Company (CTC) as chief legal officer, responsible for leading CTC’s legal and compliance functions, including the shaping and driving of CTC’s regulatory advocacy agenda. Williams joined CTC after seven years in the Obama administration serving as general counsel for two different agencies: the U.S. Small Business Administration, a 3,000-member cabinet-level agency, where as principal legal officer Williams supported over $130 billion in loans to more than 200,000 small businesses, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, where in addition to being the corporate secretary, he oversaw the legal components of U.S. government investments in more than 40 foreign governments that totaled over $9 billion.

Williams spent 20 years practicing in New York, including 13 years as in-house counsel at Citigroup handling significant national and international regulatory matters, and as a lawyer in private practice with two prominent law firms handling white-collar litigation and internal investigations.

Williams received his AB in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a JD from Harvard Law School. After law school Williams clerked for the Hon. Consuelo B. Marshall in federal district court in Los Angeles.

Williams was appointed a commissioner on the ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession; he sits on the board of the Chicago Botanic Garden, and volunteers with the Honeycomb Project, Harvard Law School Association, and his local Scout den. He was asked to join CTC’s partnership in 2018.