GENERAL SESSION:

John J. Flynn Endowed Professor of Law, University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law

Christopher Peterson is a recognized authority on consumer finance, and has frequently testified in Congressional hearings and has presented his research to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and the White House in both Democratic and Republican administrations. Professor Peterson's books include the Thompson/West casebook Consumer Law: Cases and Materials and Taming the Sharks: Towards a Cure for the High Cost Credit Market, which won the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers' outstanding book of the year prize. He is a consumer fellow of the American Bar Association's Consumer Financial Services Committee and a Regent of the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. Professor Peterson is a recipient of the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators' Consumer Advocate of the Year award and the Department of Defense's Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence--both bestowed in recognition of his efforts to protect military service members from predatory lending. Professor Peterson is actively engaged in public service and consumer protection. From 2012 to 2016 Professor Peterson served in the Obama Administration as a Special Advisor in the Office of the Director at the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in the Office of Legal Policy for Personnel and Readiness in the United States Department of Defense, and as Senior Counsel for Enforcement Policy and Strategy in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Office of Enforcement. From 2018-2020 he was the Director of Financial Services for the Consumer Federation of America. And, in 2020 he was the Democratic Party's nominee for Governor of Utah. Supported by a broad coalition of organized labor, civil rights, and public interest organizations, he won more votes than any Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate in Utah history.

George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law, Research Fellow of the Law & Economics Center, George Mason University Antonin Scalia School of Law

Todd J. Zywick is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, former executive director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center, and Visiting Fellow of the Institute for Research on Economics. From 2020-2021 he was Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law and served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission from 2003-04. In 2021 he was inducted to the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He was a 2024 recipient of the Heritage Foundation Freedom and Opportunity Academic Prize and during the Fall 2023 semester he served as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the Bruce Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He is also a Senior Fellow of the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University and a former Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law. Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 10 most-cited law professors in the field of Commercial Law, one of the Top 25 law professors on Twitter as measured by engagement levels, and one of the Top 50 most downloaded Law Authors of the Social Science Research Network. He has testified multiple times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Neil Cavuto Show, Fox and Friends, Smerconish, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Ingraham Angle, The Diane Rehm Show, Dennis Prager Show, Mike Smerconish Show, Lou Dobbs Show, Mike Gallagher, and The Laura Ingraham Show.