Diana Stern
Biography
Diana is an operating advisor at Bessemer and special counsel at DLx Law, a leading law firm serving the blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors. In her current role, Diana helps DLx Law clients across the blockchain, fintech and media sectors stand up and optimize their in-house legal functions as well as provide product counseling across the firm's client portfolio.
With over a decade of specialized legal experience in the digital assets sector and other highly regulated industries, Diana brings a wealth of knowledge to her role. Prior to joining DLx Law, she serves as the general counsel at Palm NFT Studio, a technology company collaborating with brands to expand audiences and enhance fan engagement using web3 tools. In this capacity, Diana successfully scaled the company's legal and regulatory operations and led a merger with Candy Digital.
Diana's diverse background includes roles such as payments product counsel at Stripe, where she was a founding member of and lead product counsel for their global crypto team. At Stripe, she also oversaw user policy legal in the U.S. and Canada, implementing cross-functional legal strategies that resulted in billions of dollars in payments volume with minimal product or engineering intervention. Earlier in her career, Diana served as the legal innovation designer at BakerHostetler LLP, contributing to the creation of the first enterprise smart contracts at major law firms.
Beyond her professional roles, Diana actively participates in the legal tech community. She co-organizes Bay Area Legal Hackers and serves on the Editorial Board of the MIT Computational Law Report. Previously, she served on the board of Ms. JD, a national nonprofit dedicated to building a diverse pipeline of future women leaders in law.
Diana holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in writing seminars and French from John Hopkins University and holds a JD from UCLA School of Law. In her free time, she enjoys practicing Muay Thai and indulging in her passion for writing poetry.