Karinya Verghese is vice president and chief of staff for FINRA Enforcement. Verghese joined FINRA in 2016 and served as an associate regional director for FINRA’s Office of Dispute Resolution until 2020. Prior to joining FINRA, she worked as a commercial mediator and conflict resolution consultant in Los Angeles and also spent eight years as a corporate lawyer with major Australian law firms in her hometown of Sydney, Australia.

Verghese obtained her law degree from the University of Sydney. After several years of practice in corporate law in Sydney, Verghese relocated to Los Angeles in search of a more empowering way for people to deal with conflict. She obtained her LLM in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine Law School.

Verghese is a frequent lecturer on negotiation, mediation and arbitration. She currently serves as board president for the Center for Conflict Resolution and is a member of the International Task Force on Mixed-Mode Dispute Resolution.