As career trajectories go, the move from swaps trader to derivatives lawyer isn't so unusual these days. Many young dealers are law school grads who spend some time on the swaps desk, graduate to structured products and then move over to one of Wall Street's big corporate law firms to rack up some serious billable hours.

Carolyn Jackson's progression from trader to lawyer has been anything but typical. She was a founding mother of Chase's swaps team, becoming its first hire in 1982. After rising to head of U.S. dollar derivatives trading, she moved in 1987 to BNP Capital Markets, where she set up its New York office and managed U.S. dollar derivatives sales and trading. Next, she moved to Banque Indosuez in 1993, where she served as first vice president in charge of the firm's derivatives products group and its New York trading desk. Then, she moved on to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, where from 1995 to 1997, she served as executive director and board member, the first person to hold both titles at once.

Having reached what could arguably be called the pinnacle of the derivatives world, Jackson's next move was a bit, well, unusual: she quit ISDA, became a personal trainer and aerobics instructor, and set out to write a novel drawing on her experience at the beginning of the derivatives revolution.

In short order, she went from spending her days governing the global derivatives world to what's known in the exercise business as "white shirt duty”: picking up discarded towels and other items from the floor of a Reebok health club, for the princely sum of $8.50 an hour. "That was slightly less than what I made as a derivatives trader,” she says. Gradually, she moved up to "fitness screening”—taking an inventory of an exercise client's physical health—and, eventually, became a full-fledged physical trainer. She also taught step, body sculpting and high-impact aerobics at several New York fitness clubs. (We'd explain the difference if we could.)

Jackson's literary achievements weren't so numerous. Early on, she found that writing a novel about the derivatives world can be tough going. "People thought it would be a tell-all book that would trash everybody,” she says. "That kind of stifled me. Not what I would want to do.” Her novel, which was to tell the story of a rogue treasurer who brings a money-center bank to the brink of insolvency, never got off the ground.

She went from spending her days governing the global derivatives world to picking up discarded towels and other items from the floor of a Reebok health club.

What to do when the realization sets in that your novel isn't going anywhere? Why, go to law school, of course. "I always wanted to go to law school because I knew it would give me better training to be a writer than a master's degree from a writing school,” she says. "I also had gotten interested in commodity regulation from my time at ISDA. So I took the LSAT, and the next thing I knew, I was at Fordham Law.”

After graduating, Jackson landed a job as an associate in the London offices of Allen & Overy, one of the top derivatives practices in the world. Now, she finds herself working on a variety of derivatives-related projects—everything from helping non-U.S. companies operate Internet derivatives exchanges to advising newly merged clients on their combined derivatives exposures. "I'm not picking up towels anymore,” she says.

The sheer variety of her new job is invigorating. "When I left the derivatives business, individuals had become much more specialized than in the early days,” she says. "When we first started, we marketed the customer, executed the trade and did the documentation, and we saw a broad range of products. Now, most people are highly specialized. I had been a part of the exponential development of the swap market in the early 1980s, but as a manager, all I was being asked to do was submit reports. Law attracted me because it offers such a broad range. And many of the more interesting issues in derivatives are the legal issues.”

Is she happy being a relative grunt again? "I wouldn't have been happy doing it the other way around—being a lawyer and then going to the business side,” she says. "My well-being is off the charts.”

• Forbes Elworthy has joined Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and co-head of credit structuring.
• Financial Technologies International has named Regina Rygelis a vice president in charge of global marketing and alliances. She had been at SeeBeyond (formerly Software Technologies Corp.), where she and managed the company's global alliances for financial services, including straight-through processing and global banking.
• Algorithmics has announced two promotions. Michael Zerbs, vice president of research and product marketing, will join the firm's board of directors; and Yaacov Mutnikas, the vice president of software engineering, was also named chief technology officer.
• Jerome Camblain has joined Bear Stearns International as a senior managing director and head of European distribution for fixed income and derivatives. He previously held a similar job at Nomura in London.
• Rolfe & Nolan has beefed up its derivatives capabilities with a number of new hires and management changes. Bob Freeman, formerly group commercial director, has been named European managing director. Paul Miller, formerly strategic business development director, will also be in charge of all client services. Colin Wade has been installed in the new position of market relations director. Jim McCarthy, formerly a sales and marketing director at Consort Securities Systems, will be the European sales director and will be responsible for all European revenue generation. Carl Butler, previously a senior director in technical services, will be the operations director, overseeing all technical, data-center and communications issues. Rolfe & Nolan has also created a European strategic business development unit to be led by Geoff Maskell, formerly European sales and services director. The new-product development unit will be run by Phil Reed, who will also coordinate software development activities between Europe, North America and Asia.
• Kelley Millet, previously head of J.P. Morgan Chase's North American origination division, has been named a senior managing director and global head of high-grade debt capital markets at Bear Stearns.
• Credit Suisse First Boson had expanded its U.S. equity derivatives group with three new hires. Jon Van Poznak, previously a senior sales trader at Deutsche Bank, has been named head of listed options sales. Brian Grover, former vice president of equity derivative sales at J.P. Morgan Chase and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, has joined as head of over-the-counter derivatives sales to institutions. And Jon McConaughy, from Susquehanna Partners, has joined the equity derivatives and convertible unit to manage the equity index arbitrage business in the United States.
• Commerzbank Securities has decided to structure its credit risk trading operations by sector instead of by product. David Brawn, former head of emerging-markets local currency trading at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, has been named global head of emerging-markets trading. Mike Gibbons, the head of high-yield credit trading at the bank, will focus on building up the global high-yield trading business. Kristian Sharpe, formerly at Merrill Lynch, has been named head of European financials credit trading. And Brett Golledge, also from Merrill, has been appointed head of European corporate credit trading.
• Commerzbank has also built up it credit research team in London. With David Manoux as pan-European head of fixed-income credit research, the group includes Vladen Andriouchtchenko, Christina Naoko Bruck, Vincent Dolan, Roberto Pozzi and Michie Yana. Andriouchtchenko and Yana used to work at Nomura International, Bruck has joined from Fitch, Dolan from Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and Pozzi from Italy's Mediobanca.

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