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Dave Ripley is the CEO at Kraken, a digital asset exchange company. Dave was previously a Principal at The Boston Consulting Group from September 2007 to January 2014. There, they advised Fortune 500 executives on key strategic priorities across multiple industries, including technology, healthcare, financial services, and consumer goods. Dave also managed and led direction for several concurrent teams of BCG consultants executing a diverse set of strategy projects. In July 2015, Dave founded Glidera, a company that provides a wallet-to-wallet bitcoin buying experience. Dave was with Techstars from July 2015 to October 2015. Prior to that, they were a product manager at Syclo from July 2000 to August 2005. Dave Ripley has an MBA from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management, with a focus in strategy, marketing, and technology management. Dave also has a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
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Shimon Lazarov
As Global Head of Growth at OKX, Shimon Lazarov oversees the company's international user acquisition and retention. He is responsible for a range of marketing channels, including paid, organic, out of home, TV, and affiliates, among others. Prior to OKX, Shimon was Head of Growth at Kraken, CEO of LiveCoach, and a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. He has an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BS in biology and business administration from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Saaya Nath
Saaya joined Jump Capital in 2020 and leads new venture capital investment opportunities. Prior to joining Jump, Saaya worked as a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group, where she spent time in the Private Equity practice and across a variety of strategy and operations projects. Saaya attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering. Her areas of interest include the creator economy, the future of work, enterprise education, Web3, and the future of commerce.
Thomas Chippas
Thomas Chippas is the CEO of Argo Blockchain. Previously, he was CEO of ErisX and COO of Axoni.
Niraj Pant
Niraj Pant is the Co-Founder at Ritual. Presively he was a General Partner at Polychain Capital, where he invests in early-stage cryptocurrency projects. Prior to this role, he researched privacy in the Decentralized Systems Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Niraj has also served as a Member of the Board of Directors for CoinDCX, an Ambassador for Sequoia Capital, and Co-Founder and CTO of Source Networks. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Kevin Lehtiniitty
Kevin Lehtiniitty is co-founder and chief technology officer of Fortress Trust Company. He holds a master's degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Jan-Philip Grabs
Jan-Philip is a founding partner at web3 Studios, an investment banking firm facilitating mergers & acquisitions, capital raising, and secondary transactions in the web3 & digital assets space. Previously, JP was a private equity investor at Blackstone and gained experience at Boston Consulting Group and Barclays Investment Bank. He earned his M.A. in Finance from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Peter Piekarczyk
Peter Piekarczyk is the founding engineer of Backpack. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Dan Held
Dan Held is a General Partner at Asymmetric and was previously Head of Business Development at Kraken. His former company Interchange, a portfolio reconciliation tool for crypto institutional traders, was acquired by Kraken in 7/2019. Prior to that, he was at Uber on Rider Growth/Global Data. Before Uber, Dan built some of the most popular early crypto products including ChangeTip (acquired by AirBnB), and ZeroBlock (acquired by Blockchain.com in the second ever all Bitcoin acquisition). He was part of the original 2013 crypto meetup group in SF which was comprised with the founders of Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, and others.
Andy Tang
Andy Tang is Kadena's head of innovation and was previously a software engineer at CodeCapi. He graduated from Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.
Dylan LeClair
Dylan LeClair is Director of Market Intelligence at UTXO Management and was previously Director of Market Research at Bitcoin Magazine. He is also a consultant on projects such as Block Green.
