Dr. Cartwright focuses on strategic regulatory advice related to global securities markets. ​

Dr. Cartwright served as General Counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 2006 to 2009, where he was responsible for counseling the SEC on all matters brought before it, including all enforcement actions and rulemakings. He also supervised all cases litigated by the SEC in the Courts of Appeals and advised on all adjudications appealed to the SEC. During his service there, Dr. Cartwright served as a Senior Advisor to the Chairman and other commissioners and helped shape the SEC’s major policy and regulatory initiatives. ​

Before and after his government service, Dr. Cartwright served as Senior Advisor and long-time partner at Latham & Watkins, where he was Global Chair of the Public Company Representation Practice Group and member of the Executive Committee. ​

He served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court following his clerkship for Judge Malcolm R. Wilkey of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is currently a Scholar in Residence at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. ​

Dr. Cartwright’s previous career was as an astrophysicist. From 1973 to 1977, he worked as a research physicist at the University of California, Berkely, in the Department of Physics and Space Sciences Laboratory. During this time, he published numerous articles in scholarly journals in the field of high-energy particle astrophysics.​

He was also a technical adviser on the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the sequel to the award-winning Wall Street, and currently serves as Chairman of the Board at Healthpeak Properties, Inc. ​

Dr. Cartwright received his B.S. from Yale University, his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago, and his J.D. from Harvard University, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review and winner of the Sears Prize.