Trustee spotlight: Mary Kay Scucci.

"The financial crisis of 2008 exposed serious flaws in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the dangers of unchecked leverage and regulatory arbitrage. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is the U.S. framework looking to fix those flaws," explains Mary Kay Scucci, managing director, U.S. Business Policy and Practices at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).

"However, while Dodd-Frank is the law, by design it is a framework. It leaves room for interpretation. It provides guidance for rulemaking. That's what the regulators have been working on for the past year." The real work, she adds," is in the details, in how these regulations are implemented to uphold the spirit of the law but ensure implementation does not restrict the industry's ability to provide capital and liquidity to the marketplace and therefore stimulate job creation and economic growth."

SIFMA's goal, she says, "is to ensure regulators get it right, by crafting new rules that fully implement Dodd-Frank while not creating unintended consequences, impeding market function or increasing systemic risk."

Scucci is a certified public accountant and holds two bachelor's degrees, an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. with dual concentrations in accounting and finance from Rutgers University She is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University and she recently served as a director and chairman of the audit committee for Power Medical Interventions, a Nasdaq-listed medical device firm.

Scucci's love for finance and accounting was ignited when she was doing mergers and acquisitions work at Berlex Laboratories Inc., a division of Schering AG, and decided she wanted to work in the financial services industry, where what she loved was "the business."

So she earned her Ph.D. and moved from the health care industry into financial services.

Scucci joined FEI in 1993, when she was corporate controller of Berlex at a time when women represented about 5 percent of FEI membership. Her first responsibility was to secure the boardroom and breakfast for a New Jersey Chapter planning meeting. "From this small contribution 19 years ago, I have gained many, many wonderful friends in addition to enhancing my professional knowledge," she says.

Scucci has a long history of service to FEI and FERF. She served as vice president of the New Jersey Chapter from 1997 to 1999 and has been a FERF trustee and...