a man is sworn in while he stands in front of an American flag
Category: Georgetown Magazine, Spring 2023

Title:Trailblazing Georgetown alumnus joins SEC leadership

Author: Gabrielle Barone
Date Published: April 17, 2023

Mark Uyeda (B’92) was sworn in as a commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last June, the first person of Asian descent to hold the role.

When nominated, Uyeda began receiving messages from Asian Americans who wanted to express what this meant to them. “Hearing from some of these Asian American groups and the symbolic part of how important that was to them, it’s something that I’ve come to appreciate greatly,” says Uyeda.

During the confirmation process, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Association of Asian American Investment Managers, the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of the Greater Washington, DC Area, and the Japanese American Bar Association each submitted letters to the U.S. Senate on his behalf.

In his role, Uyeda hopes to focus on capital formation and creating more investment opportunities for mainstream investors.

Uyeda encourages current students interested in the finance and business field to “make sure you’ve got a good fundamental understanding of the basic building blocks of finance.” He became a business major in part to take the upper-level courses only offered to students in the major, and he also appreciated the access he had to coursework in international relations and government.

“I wanted this combination of understanding business and international relations,” says Uyeda. Today Georgetown students explore these two fields through the Dikran Izmirlian Program in Business and Global Affairs (BGA).

Recalling the business major’s yearlong statistics requirement, he now finds this knowledge helpful when talking to economists about topics like standard deviations and confidence levels.

“I think one of the most important lessons [from Georgetown] was learning to be able to relate and interact with a lot of different people,” shares Uyeda.

His recent appointment also prompted reconnection with old Georgetown acquaintances, including government professor Anthony Arend, and business ethics professor John Hasnas.

“Having those relationships three decades later is really special.”

More News

a woman comes out of a set of glass doors

Part of an ever-growing experiential learning ecosystem, the Capitol Applied Learning Labs offers undergraduate students of all majors the opportunity to live and work in downtown DC for a semester.

students posing by glacier

Students in the Science, Technology, and International Affairs program gain practical skills for careers in a wide range of fields, including environmental science, technology policy, and global health.

Clockwise from top: Amy Kenny, the inaugural associate director of the university’s Disability Cultural Initiative and author of My Body Is Not a Prayer Request; Tiffany Yu (B’10), founder of the student group Diversability, now a nationwide community network; and Dominic DeRamo (C’23), student advocate and member of the Georgetown Disability Alliance.

The Disability Cultural Initiative is the most recent among an expanding number of academic and student programs designed to promote disability access, awareness, and empowerment.