Alex Zerden Bio Photo

Alex Zerden

Founder and Principal
Capitol Peak Strategies

Alex Zerden is the Founder and Principal of Capitol Peak Strategies, a boutique risk advisory firm based in Washington, DC. Capitol Peak works with leading financial institutions, companies and organizations to navigate emerging technologies, financial regulation, and economic crisis.

As a regulatory lawyer, economic policymaker, and financial diplomat, Alex brings a depth of public and private sector experience at the intersection of financial services, economics, and national security covering anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT), economic sanctions, financial regulation, economic crisis response, anti-corruption, financial enforcement and oversight investigations, and public-private partnerships.

Alex has worked across the U.S. government, including at the White House, National Economic Council, House of Representatives, Senate Permanent, Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), and the Treasury Department’s Office of International Affairs, Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the U.S. Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and primary federal AML/CFT regulator. In 2018-2019, Alex deployed to Afghanistan to lead the Treasury Department office at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as the Financial Attaché and senior-most representative.

Alex has published extensively on issues involving AML/CFT, economic sanctions, digital assets, anti-corruption, cybersecurity, and FinTech, including with the American Banker, Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, Center for American Progress, Center for Strategic and International Studies, New York University School of Law, and War on the Rocks. Alex has been quoted and interviewed in media outlets including Al Jazeera, BBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Alex received his J.D., summa cum laude, from the American University Washington College of Law, and his B.A., cum laude, from Tufts University. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Senior Advisor to geopolitical risk consultancy WestExec Advisors, and a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).