Caroline Ellison is an American former business executive. She is the former CEO of Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried.
She was born in November 1994 to Sara Fisher Ellison, an economist at MIT and Glenn Ellison, the Gregory K. Palm (1970) Professor of Economics at MIT.
Ellison attended Newton North High School and represented the US in the 2011 International Linguistics Olympiad. She received a National Merit Scholarship in 2012.
Ellison subsequently graduated from Stanford University in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. While at Stanford, she scored in the top 500 students in the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Putnam Competitions.
Following graduating, Ellison worked for the quantitative trading firm Jane Street where she met Sam Bankman-Fried. Both were involved in effective altruism — a community focused on using data to maximize the long-term impact of charitable donations.
Ellison joined Alameda Research in March 2018 and became co-CEO along with Sam Trabucco in October 2021.
She became the CEO of Alameda Research in August 2022 after Trabucco stepped down.
In November 2022, Bankman-Fried filed for bankruptcy for FTX, FTX’s United States operations and Alameda Research.
As FTX collapsed, Ellison gathered a group of Alameda staff members who were working from the company’s office in Hong Kong and confessed that the firm had used customers’ deposits to fill a shortfall in its accounts, The New York Times previously reported. She told them that she, Bankman-Fried, Wang and another executive, Nishad Singh, had all been aware of the scheme.
Ellison and Wang’s plea agreements were filed with the Southern District of New York on December 18, 2022.
Ellison has been found guilty of seven charges which might land her 110 years in jail. Gary Wang has been found guilty of four charges. They are both currently cooperating with authorities involved in the investigation.