Solana Foundation hires ex-Binance CMO, payments exec amid partnership push

The Solana Foundation has bolstered its leadership team with two key appointments aimed at driving institutional adoption and expanding its payments ecosystem. Rachel Conlan, formerly chief marketing officer at Binance, has been named chief strategy officer, and Jamal Raees, an ex-executive from Polygon Labs, will serve as general manager of payments.

These hires coincide with a significant push by Solana to forge new partnerships and enhance its infrastructure for stablecoins and tokenized assets. Conlan is tasked with overseeing institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and onboarding businesses onto the Solana network. Raees will focus on deepening engagement with major payment companies and developing infrastructure for payment services built on Solana, with a particular emphasis on global markets and the adoption of stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

Recent strategic alliances include a new collaboration with Modern Treasury, which will integrate the fintech firm's payment infrastructure into Solana's Developer Platform. Additionally, Solana has expanded its existing relationships with global payment giants Mastercard and Western Union, and earlier this year, partnered with Amazon Web Services to support stablecoin payments on its blockchain.

Solana is also preparing for a network upgrade named Alpenglow, which aims to drastically reduce transaction finality times from approximately 12.8 seconds to around 150 milliseconds. The network has reported substantial activity in 2026, processing over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume, with more than $4.5 billion in real-world assets and over $620 million in tokenized equity supply on the network.