Solana Foundation Appoints Former Binance CMO and Polygon Labs Executive to Drive Institutional Adoption

Solana Foundation has added two senior executives to its leadership team as it intensifies efforts to attract institutional partners and expand payment use cases on its blockchain.

New hires

Rachel Conlan, who spent three years as Binance’s global chief marketing officer, is now chief strategy officer of the Solana Foundation. Her responsibilities include institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and go‑to‑market strategy.

Jamal Raees joins as general manager of payments, coming from Polygon Labs. He previously worked at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge and payments company Wyre. In his new role he will engage payment firms and enterprises to broaden Solana’s payments infrastructure.

Network upgrades

Solana recently reduced its target slot time to 250 ms, a roughly 17 % speed increase and the third of four planned reductions. A separate consensus upgrade is being tested to shorten the point at which a payment becomes irreversible.

Token Supercycle narrative

The Foundation reports that in 2026 Solana processed over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume, with real‑world assets exceeding $4.5 billion and tokenized equity supply surpassing $620 million. It describes this growth as a “Token Supercycle,” framing it as the migration of money, assets and ownership onto always‑on blockchain infrastructure.

Leadership context

Conlan and Raees join Michael Coates, who became chief information security officer earlier this year after roles at Mozilla and Twitter.