Nekia Hackworth

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT NEKIA HACKWORTH

I am an agile attorney with two decades of experience in regulatory relations, complex investigations, leading large legal and compliance teams, providing strategic legal counsel to financial and healthcare institutions, and managing enterprise-wide operational risks for public and private sector organizations. I am a Partner at Jones Day, where my practice focuses on government and internal investigations, white collar defense, SEC enforcement, and business and tort litigation. I previously served as both Deputy Director of Enforcement (Southeast) and Atlanta Regional Director for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In those roles, I led over 250 attorneys, accountants, and professionals committed to protecting investors and the capital markets by identifying financial fraud schemes, detecting compliance failures, and prosecuting bad actors. Investigative teams under my supervision charged, for example: investment advisers and broker-dealers for failing to provide required disclosures to investors; a national pricing service for making misleading disclosures about its valuation methods; and Ponzi scheme fraudsters for luring affinity groups into non-existent investments with false promises of high returns.Prior to joining the SEC, I was a litigation partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, specializing in government investigations, internal investigations, and white-collar criminal defense. As part of my practice, I represented corporations and individuals in financial services, higher education, healthcare, and medical technology sectors in investigations by federal and state law enforcement and regulatory agencies. I also led internal investigations for clients across these industries to determine whether employees violated employer policies or otherwise engaged in misconduct, including violating federal and state law. Prior to joining Nelson Mullins, I spent nearly a decade in government service. I worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Atlanta U.S. Attorney’s Office, where I investigated and prosecuted complex fraud cases, including securities and investment fraud, mortgage fraud, tax fraud, healthcare fraud, and public corruption. I also served in the Department of Justice’s Office of the Deputy Attorney General, first as Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General, and then as Associate Deputy Attorney General and Executive Director of the DOJ\'s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.