Agnes Gambill West

Agnes Beatrice Gambill West is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.  

Agnes' research focuses on decentralized finance (DeFi) regulation, lowering barriers to innovation, the role of surveillance and privacy in DeFi payment transactions, the freedom to transact, and novel models of corporate governance for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).      

Prior to joining Mercatus, Agnes worked for Appalachian State University as an assistant professor and as an attorney-advisor for startups.  Agnes is Co-Chair of the North Carolina Blockchain Initiative, is an appointee to the North Carolina Innovation Council, and serves on the Business and Consumer Payments Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.  She has experience working as a proprietary trader and is the co-founder of an Ethereum-based blockchain payments company.  Her research has been published in the American Intellectual Property Law Association's (AIPLA) Quarterly Journal.   

Agnes received a JD from University of North Carolina School of Law, an LLM from Duke University School of Law, and an MSc from Oxford University.