Laura Yens

Laura Yens is Head of Legal at X Money, destined to become a super app where users can manage their entire financial lives. Prior to X, Laura served as both internal and external General Counsel for a variety of businesses in the financial services industry, primarily in payments, and founded her own advisory firm. She has advised and worked for organizations across the payments ecosystem to launch groundbreaking technologies benefiting billions of people worldwide. Highlights of her career include: advising the Federal Reserve on the design and build of a new payments infrastructure reaching 10,000+ financial institutions; serving as General Counsel for Lending Tree, the largest online lending marketplace in the U.S.; serving as external General Counsel for an international bank; spearheading the global payments practice in Alston & Bird’s New York office; and serving as internal General Counsel for all of Mastercard's global funds transfer businesses while also leading multiple global, cross-divisional teams on projects integral to corporate strategic initiatives. Prior to Mastercard, Laura was in-house counsel at consulting and technology companies, including The Advisory Board Company and AOL. She began her career at K&L Gates. In addition to her legal work, Laura has demonstrated thought leadership across industries within the U.S. and internationally. She has founded a roundtable for women divisional General Counsel from the top 20 largest financial institutions in the world, served as chair of payments industry groups, and presented and moderated panels on a wide range of topics, including at a Fortune 500 Chief Legal Officer conference, an invitation-only symposium in Brazil, annual Federal Reserve conferences, and payments industry conferences. Laura earned a JD/MBA from Tulane University, where she was a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma National Business Honor Society, and graduated with a BA, cum laude, in three years from the University of Pennsylvania.