Mai Santamaria

Mai Santamaria heads up the Financial Advisory team in the Department of Finance, Ireland. She is responsible for research into topics of interest in the Financial Services sector. She leads the Irish delegation in the Market in Crypto Assets Regulations proposals with the EU Commission. Mai is a Bureau member of the OECD’s Committee in Financial Markets and a member of its Ad-Hoc Expert Group in Digital Finance.  In 2018, she co-authored the Department’s Virtual Currencies and Blockchain discussion paper. This year, she co-authored one of the World Economic Forum’s Digital Currency Governance consortium whitepapers on CBDCs and stablecoins. She was a member of the BlockchainIreland Advisory board for 2 years (2018-2020). She organised the first government wide public services blockchain hackathon in 2019 and was a co-founder of BlockW. Mai has more than 20 years’ experience in the finance private sector, having worked with Barclays, Zurich, Rothchild, GE and PwC. Mai is  a Fellow Chartered Accountant in Ireland.