Emma Thomas is an Associate Director at the International Capital Market Association (ICMA). She is the secretariat to the AI in Capital Markets working group and the Bond Data Taxonomy (BDT) working group. ICMA currently has over 630 member firms in 71 jurisdictions globally. It is active in primary, secondary and repo and collateral markets with cross-cutting themes of sustainable finance and FinTech and digitalisation. Its members include private and public sector issuers, banks and securities dealers, asset and fund managers, insurance companies, law firms, capital market infrastructure providers and central banks. As part of the FinTech and Digitalisation team, she plays a key role in supporting industry standards such as the BDT, advocating for the best market practices within innovation, and engaging with the regulators on the topics of AI, data standards and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).