​​​​​​Washington, D.C. – ​The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today announced that Thaya Knight recently joined FHFA as Senior Counsel for Policy and Regulation, and that Lydia Mashburn joined the Agency as Deputy Chief of Staff.

Knight comes to FHFA from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where she served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and managed the Commissioner's corporation finance portfolio.  Knight also conducted research and policy analysis on financial regulation as Associate Director for Financial Regulation at the Cato Institute, publishing papers on private offerings, the JOBS Act, and insider trading.  Her experience also includes co-founding and serving as general counsel of a financial services start-up, serving as investigative counsel for the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, and several years in private practice with Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr, focusing on securities enforcement and litigation defense.  She holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.A. from Middlebury College.

Mashburn joins FHFA from the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, where she was Managing Director.  At Cato, she developed and managed strategy, research portfolio, communications, and outreach in the areas of monetary policy, banking regulation, securities regulation, housing finance, consumer finance, fintech, and cryptocurrencies.  She has prior experience working at the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, on Capitol Hill with both the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology and the Joint Economic Committee.  She also served as a member of the SEC's Investor Advisory Committee.  Mashburn received her B.A. in economics and a minor in international relations from the College of William and Mary. ​