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

Dr. Cartwright served as General Counsel of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2006 to 2009, where he was responsible for counseling the Commission on all matters brought before it, including all enforcement actions and rulemakings. He also supervised all cases litigated by the SEC in the U.S. Courts of Appeals and advised on all adjudications appealed to the Commission. During his service at the SEC, Dr. Cartwright also served as a Senior Advisor to the Chairman and other commissioners and helped shape the Commission’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 began his legal career in 1980 after earning a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was President of Harvard Law Review and winner of the Sears Prize.

He served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court following his clerkship for Judge Malcolm R. Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Dr. Cartwright’s previous career was as an astrophysicist. Following his graduation from Yale University, he earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. From 1973 to 1977, he was a Research Physicist at the Department of Physics and Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. During this time, he published numerous articles in scholarly journals in the field of high-energy particle astrophysics.

He was also a technical advisor 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.