MLA Places Nicole Trudeau as General Counsel at Wave Digital Assets

Hanover, MD (September 17, 2024) — Major, Lindsey & Africa (MLA), the world's leading legal search firm, has announced the placement of Nicole Trudeau as general counsel at Wave Digital Assets in Los Angeles. The search was led by Thanh Nguyen, managing director, and Michael Sachs, partner, both with MLA’s In-House Counsel Recruiting group based in Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively.

Wave is a SEC-registered investment advisory firm that provides a unique combination of venture capital, fund and private wealth management to the digital asset ecosystem. Founded in Los Angeles in 2018 by a team of highly experienced crypto natives and financial services professionals, Wave brings together smart capital strategies, deep institutional expertise and cutting-edge ideas to help investors unlock the potential of digital assets.

Commenting on the appointment, Thanh Nguyen said: “Nicole will be a tremendous addition to the Wave team, as she brings an incredibly unique, and rare-to-find, blend of investment management, financial services and securities regulatory expertise—both in TradFi and DeFi—and deep legal subject-matter expertise as well in crypto/digital assets.”

“Nicole’s business-pragmatic leadership style, commercial acumen and financial services product counseling experience will be highly valuable to Wave in this new period of the company’s growth,” added Mike Sachs.

Nicole is a seasoned general counsel who most recently served as the functional GC of Robinhood Crypto, LLC. She brings a powerful combination and cumulative track record in the financial services/investment management space and cryptocurrency/digital assets space, having also served as general counsel at CEX.IO, a global cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in London, and as chief legal officer and general counsel of a registered investment adviser and broker-dealer with ~$9B in assets under management. Before pursuing her path in-house, she was partner at AmLaw 100 firm K&L Gates.

Nicole earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School and her B.A. from University of California, Berkeley.