Donna L. Bartlett

Donna is a Bates Consulting Expert based in San Diego County, California. As a seasoned compliance and risk management professional with extensive and diverse securities experience, from investment banking to traditional broker-dealer services, she is a capable resource to provide practical and proactive broker-dealer compliance and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) consulting services , including drafting and advising on policies and procedures, performing internal and supervisory control audits, advising on arbitration/litigation matters and training services, among others.

During the span of her 30+ year career in the securities industry, Donna has predominantly held the position of Chief Compliance Officer where she was responsible for the oversight and management of the firms’ compliance programs, to include maintenance of its written supervisory procedures, participation in numerous internal (i.e., annual supervisory control and financial) and regulatory audits, conducted branch office inspections, investigated and provided responses to hundreds of customer complaints, including sales practice allegations, facilitated and responded to regulatory inquiries and audit findings.

Most notably, for a period of over 20 years, Donna served as Chief Compliance Officer for First Allied Securities, a retail full-service dually registered broker-dealer with over 1000 associated persons, where she managed all aspects of the firm’s brokerage compliance program.  Her oversight responsibilities at First Allied included, but were not limited to, the review of outside business activity analyses, private securities transactions, and Form U4 disclosure and Form U5 filings; the development, execution and ongoing maintenance of the BD policies and procedures; and administration of all aspects of the annual firm element continuing education program and annual compliance meetings.  She most recently served as the CCO for FinTech, investment banking/private equity firms where she assisted the firms with the implementation of and/or key enhancements to their compliance programs, proprietary technology and/or investment platform.   

Additionally, Donna has an in-depth knowledge of AML-related matters. She previously held the role of AML Compliance Officer at numerous firms where she was responsible for the ongoing effectiveness of the firm’s AML Compliance program, including CIP, OFAC, Client Due Diligence regulation, AML training and filing of SARs reports.