Sara Hanks, co-founder and CEO of CrowdCheck, is an attorney with over 30 years of experience in the corporate and securities field. Sara brings a wealth of legal expertise in securities law and start-ups to the emerging marketplace for crowdfunding and online capital formation. CrowdCheck provides due diligence, disclosure and compliance services for online capital formation, helping investors get the information they need to avoid fraud and make informed investment decisions, and helping entrepreneurs and intermediaries avoid liability.
Her position prior to founding CrowdCheck was General Counsel of the bipartisan Congressional Oversight Panel, the overseer of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), chaired by now-Senator Elizabeth Warren. At the Congressional Oversight Panel, Sara spent 18 months on Capitol Hill investigating the implementation and consequences of the TARP in depth. She examined the government’s intervention in the automotive companies, the execution of the banking “stress tests,” the rescue of AIG, and the international aspects of the financial crisis.
Sara began her legal career in the London office of Norton Rose Fulbright. She later joined the Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as Chief of the Office of International Corporate Finance led the team drafting the regulations that put into place a new generation of rules governing the capital-raising process and the way in which non-U.S. companies accessed the U.S. capital markets.
In 1990, Sara returned to private practice at one of the law firms that became Clifford Chance, and in 2002, was elected to the first of three terms on the firm’s Partnership Council. During two of those terms, she served on the firm’s Audit Committee. While at Clifford Chance, she advised on capital markets transactions and corporate matters for companies throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.
Sara received her law degree from Oxford University and is a member of the New York and DC bars and a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. Sara served several terms on the Steering Committee of the Corporation, Finance and Securities Section of the DC Bar, is the Vice-Chair of the International Securities SubCommittee of the ABA Business Law Section and Co-Chair of the SEC Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. She holds a Series 65 securities license as a registered investment adviser. Sara is an Army wife, aunt, skier, cyclist, gardener and animal lover.
