Solana Foundation Names Ex-Binance CMO Rachel Conlan Chief Strategy Officer, Jamal Raees GM of Payments

The Solana Foundation has appointed Rachel Conlan, Binance's global chief marketing officer for the past three years, as Chief Strategy Officer, and Jamal Raees, who joins from Polygon Labs, as General Manager of Payments. The Foundation announced both hires on 24 September 2026, tying them to a push to bring institutions, payment companies and enterprises onto Solana as stablecoin and tokenized-asset activity on the network grows.

The two appointments split the Solana Foundation's institutional work into two lanes. Conlan takes strategy across institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and go-to-market work, while Raees runs payments under a general manager title of its own. Earlier in 2026 the Foundation hired Michael Coates, formerly of Mozilla and Twitter, as Chief Information Security Officer, which makes Conlan and Raees the latest senior additions this year.

Rachel Conlan Moves From Binance CMO to Solana Foundation Chief Strategy Officer

Rachel Conlan spent three years as Global Chief Marketing Officer at Binance and before that held senior roles at OKX xBTC$84,431.33-0.1%, CAA Sports and the advertising group Havas, according to the Foundation. CoinDesk reported that she left Binance in June 2026. Her Solana Foundation remit is the work of turning institutional interest in Solana into live deployments.

Conlan's statement in the release focused on that same step from interest to adoption. "The opportunity now is to bring that to a much wider audience," she said in the release. "That means making the value clear, building the right institutional relationships and helping businesses move from interest to implementation."

In her announcement on X, Conlan pointed to tokenized stocks as her proof point, writing that "$200M in tokenised equities traded in a single day, with roughly 63% outside US market hours." She described the goal as connecting "assets, trading and payments on one global network, open to anyone, around the clock."

The ratio behind that claim is the interesting part. Set against the Foundation's own figure of $620 million in tokenized equity supply on Solana, a $200 million trading day would mean close to a third of all tokenized stock on the network changing hands in 24 hours, most of it while US exchanges were shut. Conlan did not name the day or the data source, so the figure stands as her claim. It fits the rise in tokenized stock holders on Solana we reported earlier this month.

Jamal Raees Brings Polygon Labs, Bridge and Wyre Payments Experience

Jamal Raees joins the Solana Foundation from Polygon Labs and previously held roles at Bridge and Wyre, according to the release. Bridge is now part of Stripe, as CoinDesk noted. His mandate is to work with payment companies, enterprises and the wider ecosystem to expand Solana's use as global payments infrastructure.

"Payments are one of the clearest areas where blockchain infrastructure is moving from promise to production," Raees said in the Foundation's post. In the release he added: "Solana has moved beyond crypto into technology for finance, and I'm eager to bring Solana to enterprises and payment companies around the world."

A general manager title usually belongs to a business line with its own targets, and giving payments one puts it on a separate footing inside the Foundation. Raees arrives after a run of payments adoption on Solana, including Column N.A. naming Solana the default chain for its native stablecoin rails in September 2026.

Solana Stablecoin Volume and Tokenized Equities Behind the Foundation Hires

The Solana Foundation's release cites three 2026 figures: more than $5 trillion in stablecoin volume processed on Solana, over $4.5 billion in real-world assets, and tokenized equity supply above $620 million. CoinDesk attributed the three numbers to Allium, RWA.xyz and Blockworks respectively. Each maps onto one of the new roles: stablecoin volume is Raees's territory, while real-world assets and tokenized stocks are the markets Conlan is being asked to take to institutions.

Our own data adds the user side of the payments story. USDC, the dollar stablecoin issued by Circle USDC$1.0000.0%, was held by about 9.3 million Solana wallets on 23 September 2026, up from about 7.2 million on 6 June, according to Solana Compass USDC holder data. That is growth of roughly 29% in under four months, counting wallets that hold a USDC balance rather than the value moving through them.

How Conlan and Raees Fit the Solana Foundation's Internet Capital Markets Strategy

The hires put executives behind what Conlan called Internet Capital Markets, and CoinDesk linked them to Foundation President Lily Liu's "Token Supercycle" thesis. Liu framed the stakes in the Foundation's post: the question "is no longer whether markets move onchain," she said, but "how fast, and onto whose infrastructure."

The Solana Foundation's case rests on activity already running on the network: stablecoin volume measured in trillions of dollars, tokenized stocks trading outside US hours, and a USDC holder base that keeps widening. Conlan's job is to turn that record into institutional deals, and Raees's is to bring payment companies onto rails that already carry the volume. The Foundation has not published targets for either role, so the hires will be judged by the partnerships and payment integrations that follow.