Isabelle Corbett Sterling leads BakerHostetler’s Digital and Innovative Markets team and is a commodities and derivatives lawyer at the forefront of blockchain technology and digital assets law. She advises clients across the full spectrum of issues in this space regulatory, enforcement, investigations, transactional and legislative – bringing a powerful combination of Am Law 50 firm experience and a decade in Washington, D.C., to bear on every matter.
Isabelle has extensive experience in advocacy at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), prudential regulators, and on Capitol Hill on issues affecting both innovative and traditional financial markets. She represents clients in enforcement investigations before the CFTC, SEC, National Futures Association, and other regulatory and self-regulatory authorities, and guides them through registration processes, including as exchanges, intermediaries and individuals.
Her client base reflects the breadth of the innovative markets ecosystem: crypto network and protocol development companies, custodians, traditional and digital asset exchanges, clearing organizations, payment companies, independent software vendors (ISVs), trade associations, financial institutions, proprietary trading firms, venture capital firms and their portfolio companies, blockchain services firms, intermediaries and end users. Isabelle advises on the implementation of emerging technologies and innovative products, including virtual currencies and blockchain-based assets.
Before joining BakerHostetler, Isabelle served as counsel and global head of government relations at R3, a firm whose proprietary blockchain platform is purpose-built for regulated markets. Earlier in her career, she worked at Delta Strategy Group in Washington, D.C., where she played a significant role in the rulemaking process for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which established the modern market structure for swaps. That same regulatory focus now drives her work as digital asset regulation takes shape: Isabelle remains deeply engaged in policy discussions and regulatory outreach on behalf of her clients. A sought-after speaker on innovative technology and digital assets, she is based in San Francisco and travels frequently to New York and Washington, D.C.
