Hedera expands executive team with appointments of new Chief of Staff and Head of Global Policy, and new Chief Financial Officer
December 7 2022 – The Hedera Governing Council, a consortium of leading organizations who operate the open source, hashgraph-powered, carbon-negative Hedera network for Web3 applications, has appointed two new members of the executive team. Tech and foreign policy expert Nilmini Rubin joins Hedera as Chief of Staff and Head of Global Policy, as the Council expands its focus on public policy engagement. Joining the Hedera team as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is Betsabe Botaitis, global finance executive, who has extensive experience in finance strategy in both the distributed ledger technology space and TradFi.
Brett McDowell, Chair of Hedera said: “Over the past year or so, we’ve seen significant maturation of the Hedera ecosystem, as more entities emerge and work independently to accelerate the development and utilization of Web3 capabilities uniquely enabled by the enterprise-operated Hedera network. This momentum is reflected in the quality of these new executive leaders who were attracted by the opportunity to collaborate with our Council members and make meaningful contributions in the increasingly critical areas of treasury governance and public policy engagement.”
Rubin previously contributed to the global policy team at Meta, led the international energy division of Tetra Tech and lobbied on cybersecurity for the Information Technology Industry Council. Her government experience includes serving as the director for international finance at the National Security Council, and as a senior aide at both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Rubin, Chief of Staff and Head of Global Policy at Hedera, commented: “Hedera’s commitment to environmental sustainability and potential to enable economic growth creates exciting public policy opportunities. I’m looking forward to further guiding Hedera’s strategy for global policy to support Hedera’s positive impact on the world and collaborate with policymakers to execute on shared goals such as consumer protection and market integrity.”
Botaitis is an internationally accomplished strategist and fintech executive with nearly two decades of experience ranging from large financial institutions to blockchain and cryptocurrency startups. In her new role, she acts as both the CFO and the Treasurer of Hedera. Prior to joining Hedera, she held various senior positions at renowned and leading-edge companies including Uplift (a leading Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) player in travel), Kueski (Mexico’s largest BNPL), Lending Club, and Citigroup. While at Citigroup, Botaitis became an expert on financial inclusion and fintech, and was the global director of Finance and Operations for the departments of Community Development and Microfinance (later renamed Financial Inclusion), which funded many programs in partnership with NGOs, CDFIs, and other community-based organizations.. This ultimately led to her becoming the CFO and cofounder of AIKON, a startup enabling the first DLT-based API marketplace to provide equal opportunity to software developers across the globe, giving them a chance to be paid fairly for their work.
Botaitis, Chief Financial Officer at Hedera, said: “Even amid challenging market conditions, Hedera has maintained a laser-sharp focus on innovating and building out its ecosystem with great integrity and transparency, and is seeing incredible traction for real-world use cases. I’ve long been a champion of the power of distributed ledger technology for financial inclusion and to facilitate greater equality. Hedera is a network that is well-aligned with these values, prioritizing environmental sustainability and enabling impactful use cases for financial inclusion due to its low transaction costs.”
These appointments follow the further decentralization of Hedera earlier this year, in which the product, engineering, and marketing departments of Hedera spun off into Swirlds Labs. With the Hedera Governing Council now focused primarily on governing the open-source Hedera network and its treasury, these new roles will be integral to ensuring quality stewardship of the platform in the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.
###
About Hedera
The Hedera network is the most innovative, sustainable public ledger for the decentralized economy. Hedera’s robust ecosystem is built by a global community, on a network governed by a diverse council of industry-leading organizations, including abrdn, Avery Dennison, Boeing, Chainlink Labs, DBS Bank, Dentons, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, EDF (Électricité de France), eftpos, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), LG Electronics, The London School of Economics (LSE), Magalu, Nomura Holdings, ServiceNow, Shinhan Bank, Standard Bank Group, Swirlds, Tata Communications, Ubisoft, University College London (UCL), Wipro, and Zain Group.
For more information, visit www.hedera.com, or follow us on Twitter at @hedera, Telegram at t.me/hederahashgraph, or Discord at www.hedera.com/discord. The Hedera whitepaper can be found at www.hedera.com/papers.
For Media Enquiries
Zenobia Godschalk
Hedera Hashgraph
pr@hedera.com
