Mary L. Schapiro

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan nominated Schapiro for a commissioner position at the SEC. She served for six weeks before President George H.W Bush took office in Jan. 1989; he re-nominated her for the position. Schapiro would work at the agency for six years, rising to acting chairwoman of the SEC while President Bill Clinton looked for someone to fill the role more permanently. Clinton settled on Arthur Levitt Jr.

CFTC

In 1994, the CFTC was missing a chairman for nearly two years and the organization was generally considered too passive.

When Schapiro arrived on the job, she worked to expand the CFTC's control of the commodities market. Early into her tenure, she called for the CFTC to reconsider the decision made during the George H.W. Bush administration not to regulate the derivatives market.

"We did not give up the right to pursue anybody in that market for fraud," Schapiro said. Failing to warn people of the risk involved in trading derivatives could constitute fraud, she argued.

"People were banking on the fact that the CFTC would be a sleepy little agency that would never pick up its head from the table and bring an anti-fraud action," Schapiro said.

In the year that Schapiro headed the CFTC, she increased enforcement investigations by a whopping 50 percent and collected 250 percent more money in fines than during the previous year.

Creating FINRA

In December 1995, Schapiro was named president of the NASD Regulation, which was agency that oversaw the NASDAQ market and its brokerage firms. When Schapiro arrived, the NASD was under SEC investigation for failing to protect smaller investors. A couple of months after Schapiro's hire, the SEC released a scathing report outlining allegations that the NASD deliberately looked away as member companies overcharged customers for stock purchases, failed to honor quoted prices and delayed the announcement of big trades. The SEC report outlined 14 changes that all needed to occur in the next year.

"To the extent the credibility of the association has been tarnished, we want to restore it so that investors and market participants are confident this is a well-regulated industry," Schapiro said.

By 2006, Schapiro had been named CEO of NASD Regulation, and in 2007, she ushered the organization into a merger with the New York Stock Exchange's regulatory authority. The newly-combined regulatory body was called FINRA, and Schapiro presided as the chief executive.

Show less