Solana Foundation Bolsters Institutional Push with High-Profile Hires

The Solana Foundation has appointed two senior executives from major crypto organizations to lead its push into institutional finance. Rachel Conlan, former global chief marketing officer at Binance, will serve as chief strategy officer, while Jamal Raees, a Polygon Labs veteran, takes on the role of general manager for payments.

Conlan's mandate covers institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and go-to-market strategy. She brings three years of experience from Binance, where she was global chief marketing officer before departing in June. Prior to that, she held leadership roles at OKX, CAA Sports, and Havas.

Raees joins from Polygon Labs, the organization behind the Polygon network, and previously worked at Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm now part of Stripe, and at crypto payments company Wyre.

The hires come as Solana records accelerating activity across stablecoins, tokenized assets, and payments. The network has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume so far this year, according to Allium data cited by the foundation. Tokenized assets on Solana have reached $4.5 billion, including over $620 million in tokenized equities.

President Lily Liu's 'Token Supercycle' thesis argues that financial activity will increasingly move to networks that operate continuously rather than within traditional market hours.