Diana L. Preston

Throughout her career, Diana has created a path that combines financial services law, business, and public policy. She has been a regulator, outside advisor, operating company executive, and advocate. Along the way, she has consistently sought challenging work to represent clients seeking banking, securities, and derivatives experience; strategic advice; and creative solutions to get the job done right the first time.

Before starting her own practice, Diana was Vice President of the American Bankers Association (ABA) and Deputy General Counsel of the ABA Securities Association (ABASA) where she represented banks of all sizes and charters. Her work focused on banks engaged in capital markets activities, including derivatives such as swaps and security-based swaps.

Her private sector experience includes practicing banking and securities law at the global law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and serving as the risk management Assistant General Counsel at Capital One Financial Corporation. She then became Executive Vice President and General Counsel of FOLIOfn, Inc., which is a self-clearing broker-dealer, alternative trading system (ATS), and financial services technology provider (FinTech).

She began her career serving in the federal government first as an Honors Attorney for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and then as Senior Counsel for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Her other policy work includes international advocacy as Managing Director for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). She also spent a year serving as General Counsel for a start-up financial literacy consulting firm.

Diana earned her law degree summa cum laude from the American University’s Washington College of Law. She studied international economics and Latin American development and graduated cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard College. She has lived in Mexico and Chile and is fluent in Spanish.