Adena Friedman

Friedman earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Williams College in Massachusetts and later an MBA from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.⁠[1]

In 1993, Friedman joined Nasdaq as an intern and went on to spend more than a decade at the company, heading its data products business and corporate strategy and playing an instrumental role in overseeing the acquisitions of INET, OMX, and the Philadelphia and Boston exchanges.⁠[1][1][1]

In 2009, Friedman became Nasdaq’s chief financial officer.⁠[2]

From March 2011 to June 2014, Friedman was chief financial officer and managing director of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, helping take it public in May 2012. She recalled that the job came from a cold call from a headhunter, and that the IPO made her realize that a CFO’s role is largely about risk management, while she liked risk-taking more.⁠[1][2][2]

When then-Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld began planning his succession, Nasdaq invited Friedman back. She served as president from June 2014 to December 2015 and as president and chief operating officer from December 2015 to December 2016, responsible for the operations of the company’s business segments.⁠[2][3][1]

On January 1, 2017, Friedman became president and CEO of Nasdaq and joined its board, becoming the first woman to lead the global exchange operator. She said she never experienced discrimination within Nasdaq, but early in her career, in male-dominated trading environments, she aimed within five minutes of entering a room to have people forget she was a woman and focus on what she had to say.⁠[3][2][2][2]

Since 2018, Friedman has been a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.⁠[4]

Since July 2020, Friedman has been a member of Vanderbilt University’s Board of Trust.⁠[1]

During Friedman’s tenure as CEO, Nasdaq filed board diversity listing rules with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on December 1, 2020, requiring listed companies to disclose board diversity statistics and to have, or explain why they do not have, at least two “Diverse” directors, including at least one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ+. Nasdaq said the proposal was a disclosure-based framework rather than a mandate, and that investors increasingly view board diversity as a key indicator of corporate governance. The SEC approved the rules on August 6, 2021.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5]

The advocacy groups Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment and National Center for Public Policy Research then petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to review the SEC’s approval order. On October 18, 2023, a three-judge panel held that the approval order complied with the Exchange Act and the Administrative Procedure Act and denied the petitions.⁠[6][7][7]

On January 1, 2023, Friedman also became chair of Nasdaq’s board. That year Nasdaq acquired the software company Adenza for $10.5 billion and then expanded beyond listings and indexes into treasury, risk and compliance management and regulatory reporting services for banks and capital markets; under her leadership, Nasdaq built compliance and anti-financial-crime services using AI-driven models for areas such as AML due diligence and sanctions assessments.⁠[1][4][4][4]

In January 2024, Friedman was elected to the board of directors of the Business Roundtable and became chair of its Technology Committee.⁠[1]

The full Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed the panel. The majority held that Nasdaq’s diversity rules, which required listed companies to disclose the racial, gender and sexual characteristics of their directors and to have, or explain why they do not have, at least two directors meeting Nasdaq’s definition of “diverse,” could not be squared with the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and it granted the two groups’ petitions and vacated the SEC’s order approving the Board Diversity Proposal.⁠[8][8][8][8]

In March 2025, Nasdaq announced a new employment agreement with Friedman, which the board said reflected its desire to maintain the strong momentum she had built and to promote stability across the organization.⁠[9][9]

Friedman was listed among the confirmed speakers at the crypto industry conference TOKEN2049TOKEN2049TOKEN2049 is a global series of cryptocurrency and Web3 industry conferences that originated in Hong Kong; as of October 2026 it centers on its Singapore and Dubai editions and has announced a New York edition to be added in June 2027. The Singapore edition is held at Marina Bay Sands, coinciding with the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.Open the full entry Singapore 2026, alongside PolymarketPolymarketPolymarket is a prediction market platform founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020, on which users buy and sell shares in the outcomes of political, sports, financial, cultural, and other events, with trading prices regarded as the market’s estimate of the probability that an event will occur. It rose to prominence during the 2024 US election, returned to the US market in 2025 by acquiring a licensed exchange and clearinghouse, and received a major investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, while facing gambling-regulation and insider-trading scrutiny in US states and several countries.Open the full entry founder Shayne CoplanShayne CoplanShayne Coplan is the founder and chief executive officer of Polymarket, the prediction market platform he founded in 2020, and advocates using market prices to aggregate people’s judgments about the probability of events. He attended New York University before leaving to start a company, and has led Polymarket’s fundraising, its return to the U.S. market, and its product expansion.Open the full entry and Hyperliquid Labs CEO Jeff YanJeff YanJeff Yan (Jeffrey Yan) is a co-founder of Hyperliquid, a blockchain and decentralized perpetual futures trading platform, and leads its core development team, Hyperliquid Labs. Hyperliquid has not taken outside venture capital and is known for fully on-chain order book trading and a large token airdrop to early users.Open the full entry.⁠[10][10][10][10]

In August 2026, Friedman was appointed to the board of directors of the financial software company Intuit and became a member of its Audit and Risk Committee and its Nominating and Governance Committee.⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/adenatfriedman (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adenatfriedman/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

Nasdaq: Official website: https://www.nasdaq.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]