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Josh Hawkins is Senior Vice President, Strategic Positioning & Global Thought Leadership at Circle, a consumer finance startup that uses Bitcoin technology to make money transfers and payments instant, secure, global and free. Circle was founded in 2013 by Internet entrepreneur Jeremy Allaire with $26 million in venture backing from Jim Breyer, Accel, General Catalyst, and Oak Investment Partners. Previously, Josh was Vice President of Marketing at SutherlandGold, a leading tech-focused PR and marketing firm based in San Francisco with clients including Birchbox, Comcast Ventures, CloudFlare, and TOMS. Prior to joining SutherlandGold, Josh was Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Brightcove, a leading cloud-based video platform company with software used by thousands media companies and marketers in more than 60 countries. At Brightcove, Josh led global public relations, marketing communications, creative services, and website operations. Josh joined Brightcove in 2005 when it was a pre-revenue, 20-person startup. Over the next eight years, the company grew to 350 employees, with sales and marketing operations in nine countries and revenue of $100 million. In February 2012, Brightcove completed a successful IPO. Josh speaks at industry events and has articles published in Advertising Age and Journalism & Mass Communications Quarterly.
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Li Fan
Li Fan is the Chief Technology Officer at Circle. He is responsible for managing Circle's engineering team. Previously, he has served as CTO and interim CPO at Lime, SVP of engineering at Pinterest, Senior Director of Engineering at Google Inc., and Vice President of Engineering at Baidu, China.
Wyatt Lonergan
Wyatt Lonergan is a former head of Circle Ventures and was a senior associate on the Seedinvest investment team.
Dante Disparte
Dante Disparte is the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy for Circle, a leading digital financial services firm building the most trusted treasury and payments infrastructure for the internet. Prior to joining Circle, Dante served as a founding executive of the Diem Association, leading public policy, communications, membership, and social impact. He has two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, business leader and global risk expert, most recently as founder and CEO of Risk Cooperative, a strategic risk advisory and insurance brokerage based in Washington. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and holds an MSc. in Risk Management from the NYU Stern School of Business and a B.A. in International and Intercultural Studies from Goucher College. He is the co-author of “Global Risk Agility and Decision Making” (Macmillan, 2016) and was recognized as one of the 40 leaders under 40 by the Washington Business Journal and in the inaugural Powermeter 100 list.
Matt Sorg
Matt Sorg is Vice President of technology at Solana and was previously a data scientist at Riot Games and co-founder of Concha Labs. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Washington.
Jeremy Allaire
Jeremy Allaire is Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Circle, a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to leverage the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments and commerce. Previously, Mr. Allaire co-founded and led multiple global internet technology companies with thousands of employees, hundreds of millions of consumers served, and multiple successful public offerings on NASDAQ. He has provided expert testimony on digital assets and monetary policy before the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs, the US Senate Banking Committee, and he has been named to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) High-Level Advisory Group on FinTech. Mr. Allaire provides his expertise and policy recommendations at the highest levels of financial institutions in the US, UK, and Europe.
Ilya Veller
Ilya Veller is co-founder and CFO of Gear Technologies and has more than 20 years of experience working with high net worth individuals and global hedge funds at Renaissance Capital, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. He is a graduate of New York University and Wisconsin Business School.
Sam Ewen
Sam Ewen is senior vice president and head of Media Experience and innovation at CoinDesk. He is a seasoned marketing talent with over 20 years of brand experience across physical, digital and social platforms. Sam Ewen is a graduate of Hunter College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Joshua Lim
Joshua Lim is the co-founder of Arbelos and previously Managing Director and Head of Derivatives at Genesis Trading. He previously managed the Spot and Derivatives Trading Desk at Galaxy Digital, and built the Treasury and Over-the-Counter Trading Desk at Circle. Before entering the cryptocurrency space, Josh traded Equity Volatility at Goldman Sachs.
Gordon Y. Liao
Gordon Y. Liao is chief economist at Circle and former head of research at Uniswap. He graduated from Harvard University.
Matt Stafford
Matt Stafford is vice president of global ecology at Circle and previously served as head of AI partnerships at Google. He graduated from Oxford University in England.