BDA Hires Two, Promotes Giroux, to Enhance Advocacy Efforts

WASHINGTON - The Bond Dealers of America has hired two new people and promoted a current employee to boost its advocacy efforts.

John Vahey will join BDA as director of federal policy, and Samantha DeZur will be vice president of federal policy and strategic communications, the group announced Monday. They will start at BDA in early October. Additionally, Jessica Giroux, who has worked at BDA since July 2011, has been promoted to senior counsel and managing director of federal regulatory policy.

The new hires and promotion come after Susan Collet, who was BDA's senior vice president for government relations, left the organization in June to start her own government relations advisory firm.

The additions bring the number of BDA employees to five, Giroux said.

"The promotion of Jessica along with the hiring of John and Samantha simply means the BDA is better resourced and more equipped to provide the exceptional representation that we have worked hard to deliver since being founded in 2008," BDA chief executive officer Mike Nicholas said in a release.

At BDA, Vahey will be responsible for helping to analyze federal regulatory and legislative policy concerning the U.S. fixed income markets. He will advise BDA internal committees and work with the group's members to advance their regulatory and legislative interests, the release said.

He will come to BDA from Third Way, a moderate think tank where he has been a policy advisor in its Capital Markets Initiative and has worked on banking, capital markets and financial regulatory reform issues. He previously managed the House Financial Services Committee work for then-Congressman Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., and worked as an options market-maker and an analyst at a fixed-income hedge fund.

DeZur will advise BDA internal committees and will also serve as the organization's strategic communications liaison to the financial press and Capitol Hill. She will come from the Education Finance Council, where she has headed advocacy and communications strategies and also advised the group on legislative policies regarding asset-backed securities, the municipal bond market, and student lending. She has also worked for Consolidated Green Services and the American Bureau of Shipping, according to the release.

In Giroux's new position, she will be responsible for membership engagement, outreach to regulators, and policy analysis regarding Securities and Exchange Commission, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority regulatory initiatives. Before joining BDA, she was chief of staff and counsel to then-New York State Sen. James Alesi, a Republican, and worked in New York City's D.C. offices while Michael Bloomberg was mayor, the release said.

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Law and regulation
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