Biography

Valerie J. McNevin, Esq., is an e-finance, e-security specialist in the Financial Sector Operations and Policy Division Vice-Presidency at the World Bank. She is the former Director of the Homeland Security Initiative for the Colorado Institute of Technology. She served as the first Chief Security Officer and Privacy Officer for the State of Colorado. She is a public policy and international legal consultant in electronic commerce. She has been an advisor to the U.S. Treasury International Technical Assistance Office. She recently co-authored a World Bank paper entitled Electronic Security: Risk Mitigation in Financial Transactions. She has advised public, private and non-profit entities on critical thinking skills in architecting change in the telecommunications and financial services industries. She is a co-founder of the Center for Global Leadership in Trust, also known as the Center for Public Trust, headquartered in Colorado. A member of the Colorado and Illinois bars, Ms. McNevin is an accomplished attorney with twenty years of litigation and transactional experience in telecommunications and financial services law. She has practiced in private industry as well as on a state and federal government level. Her practice expertise is in negotiating, structuring and documenting complex, multi-party electronic commerce activities. In addition, she is a trained arbitrator-mediator. A Fellow of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Ms. McNevin's research focused on how technology impacts public trust in democracies and their financial systems. She has an LL.M. in European Community Law from the University of Leicester in Leicester, England. Her dissertation analyzed the key policy issues concerning the free movement of capital in an information- based society. She holds an LL.M. in International Banking Law from Boston University School of Law, Boston, Massachusetts, where she ranked second in her class. She also holds a Diploma in Mainland Chinese Law from the University of East Asia in Macao. Her J.D. was obtained from Gonzaga School of Law in Spokane, Washington. She holds a B.S. in Telecommunications. From 1995-1999, Ms. McNevin developed and taught a cutting-edge course on electronic commerce entitled "International Electronic Financial Services Law" at the Morin Center for Graduate Banking Law at Boston University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. The Morin Center is an international center for banking law studies, with approximately 45-50 countries represented annually. Prior to teaching at the Morin Center, Ms. McNevin was Visiting Professor of International Law at the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder, Colorado. There she taught International Business Transactions and Public International Law. She has lectured on Electronic Commerce Law, International Law, Banking Law and International Arbitration at numerous law schools. Ms. McNevin is the recipient of numerous awards, is affiliated with a number of professional organizations and sits on numerous boards. She is a member of the American Law Institute. She served as Chair of the Task Force on Electronic Commerce for the International Section of the American Bar Association for four years. She also served as a member of the Committee for Law in Cyberspace. She is a sitting member of the Committee on Foreign Relations in Denver, Colorado and is an Advisory Board Member for the Journal of International Environmental Law & Policy at the University of Colorado School of Law and the CIBER Board. She is a citizen of the United States and of Canada.