Shawn Leo

Shawn brings world class legal experience to San Diego. His mission is to use his skills, determination and creative vision to help clients in need of legal and compliance services succeed.

Shawn’s early experience was forged in the high stakes world of Wall Street Investment Banking.

Shawn started his career as Vice President at The Bank of New York Mellon, one of the world’s largest custodians. Shawn was a core member of a cross-functional leadership team that built out a best in class custody platform for alternative investment vehicles, while ensuring compliance with a vast array of complex regulations.

Moving over to the New York headquarters of an international bank, Shawn joined HSBC as Senior Legal Counsel, initially to support its fund custody business. His skills and acumen were quickly recognized and Shawn’s responsibility expanded to include legal and compliance support for a broad array of financial services offered to domestic and international corporate and institutional clients, such as Trade and Receivables Finance, Project and Export Finance, Asset and Structured Finance, and Corporate Trust and Loan Agency Services. Shawn was a critical member of a legal team that successfully navigated the bank through a period of financial crisis, ensuing litigation, and regulatory fall out.

Finally, prior to launching his private practice, Shawn served as the Chief Compliance Officer and Associate General Counsel of Goal Solutions a San Diego based asset manager ($25+ billion) that incubated and spun out a national student loan program. Shawn’s effective executive leadership skills brought a vision-driven approach to decision making, strategic planning and tactical implementation. Additionally, Shawn’s legal and compliance leadership in heading information security and creating its compliance management programs to cover multiple affiliated entities served as a marker of his results-oriented business approach, collaboration and creative problem solving.