Partner
White & Case LLP
Ladan Stewart is the Global Head of Fintech and a Partner in the Firm’s Global White Collar / Investigations Practice, where she focuses on SEC and other regulatory enforcement matters, white collar investigations, civil litigation, and trials. Ladan regularly advises financial institutions, asset managers, fintechs, crypto projects, and others on a range of regulatory and compliance issues. She represents companies and individuals in connection with enforcement matters before various regulatory bodies, including the SEC, CFTC, DOJ, and FINRA, as well as in internal investigations and securities and other civil litigation.
Before joining White & Case, Ladan served for over 8 years in the Division of Enforcement of the SEC, most recently as Assistant Director and Regional Trial Counsel heading the SEC’s crypto and cyber litigation team. Ladan litigated the SEC’s most complex and programmatically important crypto enforcement matters, including against Ripple and Coinbase. She also investigated and litigated a broad range of potential securities law violations, including insider trading and disclosure violations.
Ladan is committed to pro bono work and community service, and sits on the Board of Directors of Sanctuary for Families. Ladan earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and her J.D. from Columbia Law School.
The financial services industry is on the cusp of its most transformative decade since the commercialization of the internet. Venture capital is fueling the rise of AI-native fintechs, digital identity platforms, and tokenized financial ecosystems that promise to upend traditional models. Instant payments, programmable money, and agentic AI are reshaping everything from lending and fraud prevention to wealth management and cross-border payments. But with this tidal wave of innovation comes unprecedented challenges: how do financial institutions strike the right balance between speed and security, compliance and creativity, disruption and trust?
This super panel discussion brings together venture capitalists, fintech executives, bank executives and management consultants to explore the future of venture-backed fintech innovation, its impact on all stakeholders in digital finance, and the biggest opportunities and challenges ahead. Panelists will examine where capital is flowing in 2026, which technologies will define the next wave, how banks and fintechs can collaborate without compromising resilience, and what governance and risk frameworks must evolve to keep pace.