The Honorable Juan Zarate is global co-managing partner and chief strategy officer at K2 Integrity. He is also the chair and co-founder of Consilient, an innovative fintech dedicated to establishing the next-generation AML/CFT system through the application of federated AI.
Prior to K2 Integrity, Juan served as the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism (“counterterrorism czar”), where he was responsible for developing and implementing the U.S. counterterrorism strategy and policies related to transnational security threats, including anti-money laundering, kleptocracy, and transnational organized crime.
He was the first-ever assistant secretary of the treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes. In this role, he led the post-9/11 anti-money laundering and sanctions regime expansion in the United States; helped develop the international standards for AML/CFT and proliferation finance; supervised the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the Treasury’s Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture (TEOAF); and drove the innovative use of the Treasury’s national-security-related powers and ultimately the establishment of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). Prior to 9/11, Juan served as a federal terrorism prosecutor, working on international terrorism cases like the bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole.
Juan sits on the boards of Northwestern Mutual, Guardian Space Technology Solutions, the National Endowment for Democracy, and on the director’s advisory board for the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Since 2014, he has served as an independent adviser to Coinbase, the largest virtual asset service provider in the United States. Juan was appointed twice by Pope Francis to serve on the board of the Vatican’s Supervisory and Financial Information Authority; served on the Boston Dynamics board; and the board of Cambridge Quantum Computing North America. For over a decade, Juan was an independent advisor to HSBC, including for seven years on HSBC’s Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee.
Juan is the chair and co-founder of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, among other advisory roles for several think tanks and institutions. He was a visiting lecturer in law at the Harvard Law School for eight years and is a published author, including the books Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare (2013) and Forging Democracy (1994).
Juan is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, where he received the John P. Reardon award as the top male scholar-athlete. He was a Rotary International Scholar at the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain.
