Solana Foundation Appoints Rachel Conlan as Chief Strategy Officer and Jamal Raees as General Manager of Payments

Appointments strengthen institutional growth and payments leadership as more financial activity moves onto Solana

NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Solana Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the decentralization, growth, and security of Solana, today announced the appointment of Rachel Conlan as Chief Strategy Officer and Jamal Raees as General Manager of Payments. Appointments strengthen institutional growth and payments leadership as more financial activity moves onto Solana.

These appointments reflect the maturation of the Solana ecosystem and come at a point of step-change in onchain activity. In 2026 alone, Solana has processed more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume. Real-world assets on the network have surpassed $4.5 billion, while tokenized equity supply has crossed $620 million. Payments, treasuries, funds and equities are moving beyond experimentation and into production on Solana — operating globally, 24 hours a day.

That shift has a name: the Token Supercycle - the long-term migration of money, assets and ownership onto always-on internet infrastructure. It is the thesis behind Internet Capital Markets, where any asset can be issued, traded and settled natively on the internet, and where market access is defined by connectivity rather than by geography or institutional tier.

Conlan's remit is to convert that thesis into adoption: leading strategy across institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and the go-to-market that brings Solana's infrastructure to the companies and users who will run on it. She joins from Binance, where she spent three years as Global Chief Marketing Officer, and previously held senior leadership roles at OKX, CAA Sports and Havas.

Raees will build on Solana's existing momentum in payments as General Manager of Payments, working with payment companies, enterprises and the broader ecosystem to expand the adoption and reach of Solana as global payments infrastructure. He joins from Polygon Labs, and previously held roles at Bridge and Wyre.

"The Solana ecosystem is growing in both scale and ambition. We're in the early innings of the Token Supercycle, where all assets and financial activity become native to the internet, enabling markets that are faster, more accessible and always on," said Lily Liu, President, Solana Foundation. "Exceptional leaders choose Solana because they want to be close to what's being built. Rachel brings deep experience translating complex technology into something people actually adopt, while Jamal brings years of experience building payment infrastructure and working with enterprises on the future of money. That is the work in front of us. The question is no longer whether markets move onchain — it's how fast, and onto whose infrastructure."

"What brought me to Solana was the ambition of the builders and how much it is already being put to use," said Rachel Conlan, Chief Strategy Officer, Solana Foundation. "The opportunity now is to bring that to a much wider audience. That means making the value clear, building the right institutional relationships and helping businesses move from interest to implementation."

"Payments are one of the clearest areas where blockchain infrastructure is moving from promise to production," said Jamal Raees, GM Payments, Solana Foundation. "Solana has the performance, reliability and developer ecosystem to support payments at global scale. Solana has moved beyond crypto into technology for finance, and I'm eager to bring Solana to enterprises and payment companies around the world."

These appointments are the latest in a growing number of senior operators choosing to join and build within the Solana ecosystem. Earlier this year, Michael Coates joined the Solana Foundation as Chief Information Security Officer, bringing senior security expertise from Mozilla and Twitter.

About Solana Foundation
Solana Foundation is a non-profit based in Zug, Switzerland, dedicated to the decentralization, growth, and security of Solana. For more information, please visit https://solana.org

Media Contact: press@solana.org

SOURCE Solana Foundation