Latest in Crypto Hiring: Ex-pros from Coinbase, Blockchain.com Join Cowen Digital

Cowen Digital expanded its institutional sales team with pros joining from Blockchain.com and Coinbase. 

The digital asset division of financial services firm Cowen brought aboard Jackie Rose as director of institutional sales, it revealed Thursday. Rose was previously Blockchain.com’s head of institutional business development and also formerly worked at The Carlyle Group and JPMorgan as an associate and investment banking analyst, respectively. 

Chase Campbell is now Cowen Digital’s vice president of digital asset sales. Formerly an institutional sales associate at Coinbase, he supported traditional finance and crypto-native firms looking to trade and custody digital assets. 

TD Bank revealed earlier this month that it is set to acquire Cowen for $1.3 billion, though details about how it could seek to leverage Cowen’s digital assets unit remain unclear. 

Eric Rose, Cowen’s head of execution, said in a statement that Cowen Digital plans to continue expanding its team as part of its strategic build over the next five years.

Electric Capital added former SEC chairman Jay Clayton, ex-Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh and Pratiti Raychoudhury, Meta’s head of research, as advisors.

The venture capital firm recently announced $1 billion in capital to invest in early-stage Web3 companies and protocols with investment sizes ranging from $1m to $50m. 

“By bringing together experts in product design, the global financial system and regulation, Electric Capital founders are able to accelerate innovation and the adoption of Web3 tools,” the company said in a statement.

A former member of the institutional business development team at now-bankrupt Celsius Network is now head of lending solutions at Digital Prime Technologies. 

Courtney Campbell is set to lead the development of the company’s institutional lending solution initiative to be announced later this year, Digital Prime Technologies CEO James Runnels said in a statement. 

Before Celsius, she was a managing director for Credit Suisse’s prime services group. Prior to that, she was the Americas head of international securities lending and synthetics at Bank of America, where she worked for more than a decade. 

Identity provider Okta added Emilie Choi, president and chief operating officer of Coinbase Global, to its board of directors.

Choi has worked at Coinbase since 2018 and has also served as a member of the board of directors for ZipRecruiter and others. Before Coinbase, she was LinkedIn Corporation’s head of corporate development from 2009 to 2018.

“It’s clear that identity is at the heart of every industry and every digital interaction,” Choi said. “I look forward to working with Okta as the company executes on its mission of freeing anyone to safely use any technology and creating a world where your identity belongs to you.”

Blockchain analytics company Flipside Crypto hired Daphne Kwon to lead its DAO initiatives.

Kwon joins Flipside Crypto from media conglomerate Meredith Corporation, where she was chief strategy officer. She has also worked as president and chief operating officer of Betaworks Studios, and has held chief financial officer and business development roles at brands such as Disney and Oxygen Media. 

“We’ll see the emergence of new business models with truly decentralized governance and investment structures that release the power of community passion and expertise — many of which promise to tackle some of the biggest opportunities in global finance, creator economies, healthcare and environmental issues,” Kwon said in a statement. 

In case you missed it

Digital assets prime brokerage Floating Point Group nabbed Peter Eliades — who last headed electronic trading sales for Wells Fargo — to oversee business development in the US and throughout Asia Pacific, Blockworks reported Wednesday. 

Eliades was a vice president at Lehman Brothers in 2001 before becoming a managing director at Bear Stearns & Co. about four years later. He went on to work for JPMorgan as head of Americas trading.

Digital bank Cogni recently brought aboard former registered commodity trading advisor Simon Grunfeld to lead its Web3 initiatives. 

The executive has previously worked for blockchain-as-a-service platform SIMBA Chain, as well as for digital collectibles marketplace VeVe. He also founded white-label platform Ibinex to help enterprises develop crypto exchanges.

Alameda Research co-CEO Sam Trabucco revealed Wednesday he is stepping down from his role at the crypto quantitative trading firm and liquidity provider. He has not yet decided on a new destination, he said in a series of tweets. 

Caroline Ellison is now sole CEO of the company, an Alameda spokesperson told Blockworks.

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