Sandra Ro 

Sandra is a proponent for ‘human-centric tech’. From investment banking and currency markets to blockchain technology, she is an early angel investor and advocate of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. She currently serves as the CEO of Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), the world’s largest leading Swiss-based non-for-profit association with more than 500 institutional members, 231 ambassadors, across 109 jurisdictions and disciplines. 

In 2023, she was appointed onto the CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham’s Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC), Digital Asset Market Subcommittee (DAMS) and cochairs the Taxonomy and Tokenization Infrastructure workstreams within the subcommittee. She was previously appointed as the Senate representative of the New York State Digital Currency Task Force, and serves on the AIFC Fintech Council (Kazakhstan), World Economic Forum’s Digital Currencies Governance Consortium, International Securities Services Association’s DLT & ISO Standards, GI Trust FATF Travel Rule Standards Task Force (South Korea), GBBC’s Global Standards Mapping Initiative, Blockchain for Climate (BxC) Board, Salesforce’s AI Advisory Board, Filecoin Foundation Advisory Board, United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Innovation Accelerator Advisory Council, and several government Convergence AI working groups and councils as well as Board director of several fintech start-ups. 

Sandra was a founding member of many of the earliest blockchain associations including Hyperledger Foundation, The Linux Foundation, the Post Trade Distributed Ledger Group (PTDL) and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). 

She is a frequent guest lecturer and hackathon judge at universities discussing topics from fintech to data privacy and harnessing emerging technologies to solve real world problems and has testified and presented in front of governments including the U.S. Senate Committee - Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry, UK House of Lords, Economic Affairs Committee, European Parliament, South Korea’s National Assembly, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, in both closed door and public forums. 

Whilst at CME Group, she headed FX & Metals Research & Product Development and founded a new business unit, Digitization. Sandra and her team created the CME CF Bitcoin pricing index and reference rate, CME Bitcoin Futures, and post trade, clearing and settlement solutions. 

She and her team filed the first set of crypto derivatives patents with the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). Sandra was one of the corporate digital asset pioneers to recognize the potential of this technology and its many applications; she presented at one of the first CFTC Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) on the potential of blockchain technology on February 23, 2016. Previously, she was a London-based derivatives banker at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank in the foreign exchange and interest rate markets. 

Sandra holds a M.B.A. in Finance and Accounting from London Business School, studied Computer Science at Columbia University, School of Continuing Studies and earned a double B.A. degree from Yale University in History (Military) and Studies in the Environment.