Behind the Curtain: The Regulator's Perspective for 2024 and Beyond

Mary McCarthy currently serves as Counsel for Antitrust & Global Competition at United Airlines. She joined United from the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she was a Trial Attorney and involved with the Division’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force. Prior to joining the Antitrust Division, Mary practiced corporate litigation and white-collar defense.

Sandra Talbott is the Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force, a nationwide initiative to combat antitrust crimes and related schemes in government procurement, grant, and program funding at federal, state, and local levels of government. In this role, Ms. Talbott is part of the PCSF’s leadership team, responsible for strategy, operations, programming, and day-to-day management of the PCSF. From 2019-2023, Ms. Talbott served as a federal prosecutor with the Antitrust Division’s Chicago office, where she investigated and prosecuted fraudulent schemes designed to undermine competition, including criminal conspiracies that target public agencies, bid rigging, price fixing, and other related federal crimes.
Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Ms. Talbott was an Assistant Attorney General in the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, where she was part of civil litigation teams responsible for investigating matters of significant public importance and prosecuted complex financial fraud and tax schemes against consumers, companies, and the government. Ms. Talbott previously worked as Vice President and Director of Compliance for a multibillion-dollar financial institution. Ms. Talbott began her career as an Assistant District Attorney in New York City. She is a graduate of American University’s Washington College of Law.

Vaishali Rao focuses her practice in two primary areas: first, defending companies in regulatory investigations and litigation brought by governmental bodies; second, compliance counseling related to statutes intended to protect consumers. She has advised a range of financial institutions—small and large banks, online lenders, and fintech businesses—on these issues and also maintains strong relationships with Illinois banking regulators.

Vaishali has defended companies facing inquiries, requests for information, subpoenas, civil investigative demands, supervisory examinations, or lawsuits brought by government entities like state attorneys general, state and municipal regulators, state banking examiners, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the U.S. Department of Justice.

She has extensive experience resolving complex unfair and deceptive trade practice cases either through litigation or negotiated settlements. She is also skilled in the drafting and implementation of agreements or court orders requiring substantial business reform.

Vaishali has helped companies identify and manage risk by counseling them through issues intersecting with consumer protection, including the: Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), state telemarketing laws, federal and state privacy requirements—including Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)—data breach management, student loan licensing, and other state law requirements.

As a complement to risk management, Vaishali drafts opinion letters, and seeks formal or informal interpretative opinions from government agencies.

Prior to joining Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, Vaishali served as a supervising attorney in the Consumer Fraud Bureau of the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. During her tenure, she frequently led multi-state investigations and litigation related to advertising, marketing, and promotion.