Originally published https://www.law.nyu.edu/
Over a long career, Lady Barbara Thomas Judge has built a résumé most attorneys would envy. The current chairman of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), Lady Judge was the youngest commissioner appointed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where in the 1980s she helped usher in unprecedented access for foreign companies to U.S. capital markets. She has been a member of boards of major merchant banks and media conglomerates from Hong Kong to New York, and founded Private Equity Investor, one of the first British fund of funds investing in American private equity funds.
Her career almost took an entirely different path. As a student at NYU Law, Lady Judge planned to specialize in tax law after discovering an aptitude for the coursework. It helped that she found a champion in tax law Professor George Zeitlin. “He was a wonderful professor,” she says, “and encouraged me a great deal.”