Vanessa is Director and Assistant General Counsel at Bank of America.  Previously she was senior counsel in the finance department at Travers Smith, where she is part of the Derivatives & Structured Products Group. She has a developed transactional and advisory practice and is qualified in New York and Brazil. Vanessa is recognised as a ‘Rising Star’ by The Legal 500 UK.

Vanessa’s clients include asset managers, investment funds, fintechs, banks, pension schemes and corporates. She regularly advises on derivatives, repo, stock lending, custody and collateral arrangements. Vanessa also guides clients through regulatory developments such as EMIR and SFTR and their impact on derivatives arrangements.

Vanessa was appointed to the 2022 ISDA Future Leaders in Derivatives Programme and the 2021 WIND Rising Stars Programme.

She has co-authored articles for Funds Europe, the Journal of International Banking and Financial Law and Global Legal Group (GLG) on various topics including LIBOR discontinuation, the EMIR initial margin requirement and the use of smart contracts in the derivatives space. She is also a contributing co-author to GLG, The International Comparative Legal Guide to Derivatives, on the England & Wales chapter.

She has taken a number of speaking roles in recent events, including a roundtable event on fund level hedging and a panel discussion on investments in Emerging Markets hosted by WIND.