Professor Hillary Sale

Hillary A. Sale is an influential business leader and consultant as well as a recognized expert in financial services, ESG, securities, crisis management, compliance, corporate governance, strategy, and leadership. She is director for the Cboe U.S. Securities Exchanges, Cboe Futures Exchange, and Cboe SEF. She served the maximum of two terms as a member of the FINRA Board of Governors from 2016-2022, where she Chaired the Regulatory Policy Committee and served on the Executive, Nominating and Governance, Compensation, and Regulatory Operations Committees. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Foundation Press, an educational publisher of scholarly books, is a faculty member with the National Association of Corporate Directors, speaks and works with boards across the country, and is also the Chair of the DirectWomen Board Institute.

Hillary is the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Leadership and Corporate Governance at Georgetown Law Center and a Professor of Management at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. As an award-winning scholar and industry-focused academic, she writes and speaks about corporate governance, ESG, securities, compliance, strategy, and leadership. In the spring of 2017, she was the Sullivan & Cromwell Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, teaching Corporate Boards and Governance and Leadership.

She is an accomplished business partner who speaks to industry groups and academic audiences and was selected by the St. Louis Business Journal as a “2014 Most Influential Business Woman.” In addition to running governance and leadership programs, Hillary consults regularly with CEOs, C-suite executives, and boards on governance, strategy, ESG, inclusion and diversity, company culture, board effectiveness, and compliance. She also works with business leaders in both custom executive education programs and programs at Harvard Law, where she Chairs the Women’s Leadership Initiative, and at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and the Law Center.

Hillary graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and holds a master’s degree in Economics from Boston University, where she also completed her B.A., summa cum laude. Before joining the Georgetown faculty, she was the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law and a Professor of Management at Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, Hillary served as the F. Arnold Chair in Corporate Finance and Law at the University of Iowa College of Law.