Chris Hayes

President, RedLine Strategies LLC

Chris Hayes has over 12 years of experience advocating for thoughtful financial and technology regulation with U.S., UK, and European policymakers. Throughout his career, he has crafted, managed, and successfully executed comprehensive plans that achieved concrete policy results on behalf of his clients. Having worked for multiple trade associations, Chris worked closely on various industry issues as well as policy issues, and has developed extensive networks of relationships among institutional allocators (LPs), private fund managers (VC and PE), and industry stakeholders in the traditional finance and digital assets industries.
In addition to running RedLine Strategies, Chris currently serves as Managing Partner at Capitol Asset Strategies (CAS), a policy advisory firm that helps clients navigate policy (legislative/regulatory) challenges in Washington.    
Chris is also active as an advisor, investor, and fundraiser in the private funds' space, given his extensive network with the institutional allocator community. He serves as an advisor to Aumni, Inc., a private fund legal analytics platform recently acquired by JP Morgan, and on the advisory board of Steward Asset Management, a strategic investor to emerging and diverse private equity and opportunistic managers.  He also serves as an advisor to Renna, a startup digital asset custody software platform.
Prior to RedLine and CAS, Chris held several policy roles in the digital assets industry, as well as in the traditional financial services space. Most recently, he led global government relations for the Celo Layer-1 blockchain, as well as US government relations for Sorare, an NFT company backed by Softbank.
Prior to entering the blockchain industry, Chris built and led the global advocacy program for the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) for five years. He also led its legal best practices initiatives, as well as ILPA's engagement with in-house legal teams at LPs. Prior to ILPA, Chris co-led the government affairs efforts as General Counsel at the Small Business Investor Alliance (SBIA), the primary trade association for Business Development Companies (BDCs), US middle-market private equity advisers, and Small Business Investment Companies (SBICs).  He has a wide network of relationships and contacts in the SBIC space, including at bank LPs, SBIC managers, and the SBA.
Chris holds a Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law, and a B.A. in political science and legal studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is admitted to practice law in California and the District of Columbia.

Advisory Work Experiences:

  • Serve on the Advisory Board of a anchor investor fund of funds, raising Fund 1.  Provide feedback on potential GPs in their pipeline, as well as capital introductions to public pension, family office, and endowment LPs.  Help them understand and navigate the SBIC licensing process.
  • Serve as an Advisor to a startup digital asset custody software business, helping them understand and navigate SEC regulations to ensure their product will be usable by key customers.
  • Served as an Advisor to a successful Fintech company, Aumni on their efforts to build a product to sell to LP legal counsel.  Provided extensive feedback on the product, made a variety of sales introductions, and represented the firm at key conferences.  Aumni was sold for a significant valuation to JP Morgan in 2023.

Policy Accomplishments for Clients:

  • Led multiple successful advocacy campaigns in Congress and at the SEC in the private funds space for GPs and LPs.
  • Successfully achieved ILPA’s policy agenda at the SEC, resulting in groundbreaking rule changes for private funds.
  • Successfully achieved amendments to AIFMD II on behalf of clients.
  • Worked as part of a coalition to ensure US public pensions were not taxed as part of the 2017 tax reform legislation. 
  • Working to pass bipartisan legislation as one of the first rollbacks to Dodd-Frank, adjusting the private fund adviser SEC registration calculation of 150MM under the Investment Advisers Act.
  • Conducted extensive advocacy engagement at the SEC on the AFFE rule for BDCs, and the ability for BDCs to access 2:1 leverage, resulting in the successful passage of legislation to permit additional 2:1 leverage for BDCs.
  • Spearheaded the passage of legislation that created an office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation, and a permanent Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee at the SEC.
  • Led a project team of external lawyers that created the first free, publicly available model limited partnership agreement (LPA) for private funds, which was released to the industry by ILPA.
  • Created a network of in-house legal professionals at institutional LPs, as well as an industry-leading conference, the ILPA Legal Conference (LCON), which focused on navigating investment fund terms in private equity.