Allison Herren Lee

Allison Herren Lee
Senior Research Fellow, New York University Law School

Former SEC Acting Chair and Commissioner Allison Herren Lee served as Commissioner from June 2019 through July 2022.  She served as Acting Chair of the Commission from Jan. 21, 2021 to Apr. 17, 2021. During her tenure, Commissioner Lee focused on bringing transparency and accountability to markets on issues related to climate change and other ESG-related information. 

Commissioner Lee has been a securities law practitioner for over 25 years. Recently elected to the American College of Governance Counsel, she has written, lectured, and taught courses internationally in Spain and Italy on financial regulation and corporate law. She is a member of the board of directors of the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts with a mission to build a global impact economy translating environmental and social impact into the language of currency (a spinoff of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Project at Harvard Business School).  

Commissioner Lee served for over a decade in various roles at the SEC, including as counsel to Commissioner Kara Stein and as Senior Counsel in the Division of Enforcement’s Complex Financial Instruments Unit. In addition, she has served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, was a member of the American Bar Association’s former Committee on Public Company Disclosure, and participated on a USAID project in Armenia assisting in the drafting of periodic reporting and disclosure provisions for a comprehensive law of the Republic of Armenia on Securities Market Regulation.

Prior to government service, Commissioner Lee was a partner at Sherman & Howard LLC, focusing on securities, antitrust, and commercial litigation. A member of the Colorado bar, she holds a bachelor’s degree in Business from the University of Colorado and a JD from the University of Denver College of Law, where she was salutatorian, a Chancellor’s Scholar, and served on the Law Review.