KEY COMPLIANCE UPDATES TRACK: Fireside Chat with the CFPB (Closed to Media)

Alisha Sears

Director, Regulatory Counsel, Mortgage Bankers Association

Alisha Sears is Director and Regulatory Counsel in the Residential Policy and Strategic Industry Engagement Department at the Mortgage Bankers Association. Sears covers legal issues, trends in litigation, and regulatory compliance matters, and staffs the Legal Issues and Regulatory Compliance Committee and the Regulatory Compliance Subcommittee. Prior to joining the MBA, Sears was with the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS). Sears is a member of the Maryland State Bar Association, the American Bar Association’s Banking Law Committee, and Women in Housing and Finance.

Michael Bresnick

Chair, Financial Services Investigations and Enforcement Practice, Venable LLP

Michael Bresnick is chair of the Federal Services Investigations and Enforcement Practice at Venable LLP. He advises clients on a wide range of financial services, government enforcement actions, consumer protection, mortgage fraud, FIRREA, BSA/AML, securities matters, and congressional investigations. An accomplished trial and appellate attorney, Bresnick has led 16 federal trials and numerous cases in federal and state appellate courts. Prior to Venable, Bresnick served in the U.S. Department of Justice from 2003 to 2013, and during the last two of those years he served as executive director of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. In this role, he served as a top advisor to the U.S. attorney general and led the largest interagency coalition ever assembled to combat financial fraud. Bresnick previously worked as an assistant chief in the Fraud Section of the DOJ Criminal Division, supervising a team of attorneys in the investigation and prosecution of financial crimes, including mortgage fraud, bank fraud, securities fraud, investment fraud, and grant and procurement fraud, among others. Prior to that, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, one of the largest in the country. He began his career as a litigation associate, focusing on white-collar criminal defense, including securities and corporate fraud, complex commercial litigation, and bankruptcy litigation.

Eric Halperin

Assistant Director for Enforcement, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

Eric Halperin is the Enforcement Director and a Senior Advisor to the Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mr. Halperin was formerly CEO of Civil Rights Corps. From 2010 to 2014, Mr. Halperin served in leadership roles in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, first as Special Counsel for Fair Lending and later as Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Division’s fair housing, fair lending, and employment enforcement programs. He served as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division from 1998 to 2004. Mr. Halperin has also worked as a senior advisor to Open Society Foundations’ U.S. Program and as the Director of the Center for Responsible Lending's Litigation Program and its Washington office.