Solana Foundation has appointed Rachel Conlan as Chief Strategy Officer and Jamal Raees as General Manager of Payments, the organization announced on Thursday. Solana is a high-speed blockcha
Solana Foundation has appointed Rachel Conlan as Chief Strategy Officer and Jamal Raees as General Manager of Payments, the organization announced on Thursday.
Solana is a high-speed blockchain network designed for fast and low-cost transactions. The Foundation is the nonprofit that supports its growth and development.
Conlan joins from Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, where she spent three years as Global Chief Marketing Officer. She previously held senior leadership roles at OKX, CAA Sports and Havas.
Her mandate at Solana is to lead strategy across institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and go-to-market. In essence, her job is to turn the network's infrastructure into something companies and institutions actively build on rather than evaluate from the sidelines.
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Meanwhile, Raees joins from Polygon Labs and previously held roles at Bridge and Wyre, two companies focused on payment infrastructure.
He will lead Solana's payments strategy, working with payment companies and enterprises to expand the network's reach as a layer for moving money globally.
Solana Foundation appoints Rachel Conlan (L) as Chief Strategy Officer and Jamal Raees (R) as GM of Payments as ecosystem activity hits new highs.Picture courtesy: Solana
The appointments come during a stretch of record-level activity on Solana. In 2026 alone, the network has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume, as per data from Solana Foundation.
Real-world assets on the network have surpassed $4.5 billion, while tokenized equity supply has crossed $620 million. In August, Solana processed a record 5.2 billion non-vote transactions, its busiest month ever.
"Exceptional leaders choose Solana because they want to be close to what's being built," said Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation. "The question is no longer whether markets move onchain — it's how fast, and onto whose infrastructure."
The hires follow a pattern of senior operators moving into the Solana ecosystem. Earlier this year, Michael Coates joined the Foundation as Chief Information Security Officer, bringing senior security experience from Mozilla and Twitter.
Column, an FDIC-insured U.S. bank, recently launched stablecoin support with Solana as the default network, and Visa uses Solana for USDC settlement.
Related: Solana dominates x402 with 23.2M transactions in four weeks
