Solana Foundation appoints Rachel Conlan and Jamal Raees to lead strategy and payments push

The Solana Foundation is making a serious statement about where it wants to be in two years: the backbone of institutional crypto payments. The Switzerland-based non-profit tapped Rachel Conlan, former chief marketing officer at Binance, as its new chief strategy officer, and brought in Jamal Raees, who previously led payment initiatives at Polygon Labs, as general manager of payments.

The numbers that made these hires inevitable

The network processed over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume in 2026 alone. Real-world assets on Solana have crossed $4.5 billion, and tokenized equity supply on the network has surpassed $620 million.

Conlan pointed to the quality of Solana’s builder community as a factor in her decision to join. “The ambition of its builders and the active usage already seen on the platform” were her stated reasons for making the move from one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges to a non-profit focused on protocol growth.

What each appointment actually signals

The Foundation also hired Michael Coates as chief information security officer in July 2026, meaning the organization has added three senior executives in rapid succession. Security, strategy, and payments: that is a fairly coherent set of priorities for a network trying to win over compliance-conscious institutional partners.