Role Models:
Catherine Ahn

Catherine Jisun Ahn currently serves as the Head of Complex Corporates and the Acting Regional Head of numerous jurisdictions for Complex Investigations at HSBC Holdings plc. She moved to London after serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for Major Frauds Section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, where she criminally prosecuted one of the largest COVID-19 disaster relief loan frauds charged with the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as securities fraud and fraudulent FinTech investment firms. Her cases have been featured in Rolling Stones magazine, the LA Times, CNBC, Fox, Dirty Money Moves, and American Greed. She is the daughter of Korean immigrants, including North Korean refugees, and has been blessed to be part of the U.S. government’s push to ferret out terrorist finance, human rights violations, fraud, and funding for war crimes in her nearly 20 years of service to the U.S. government. Catherine currently serves on the Board of Stiles Hall, whose mission is to empower future student leaders by developing the pipelines for diversity in higher education, and previously served on the Circle of the Purple Moon Dance Project, whose mission was to empower lesbians and women of color through dance. She was previously elected Academic Vice President for the Associated Students of the University for California, responsible for representing all students in academic policies and appointments to the Academic Senate, setting policies with tenured faculty, and advocating for increased diversity and support from senior administrators. Following 9/11, she organised legal representation for graduate students at risk of deportation for protesting the invasion of Iraq. Catherine graduated from U.C. Berkeley with degrees in business, political science, and law, and from Princeton with a Masters in Public Affairs focusing on the quantitative analysis of domestic policies.