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Taariq Lewis is the CEO and founder of VolumeFi, a cross-chain product lab that is debuting their cross-chain messaging layer, Paloma (palomachain.com). He was also the co-founder of Sommelier Protocol with Zaki Manian and Jack Zampolin and led product management and product marketing for Sommelier. He is a serial entrepreneur who has also founded several successful fintech and blockchain products - Promise, Aquila, and SericaPay. Taariq also helped bring Bitcoin and blockchain engineering to a global audience with numerous educational events.
Work Experience
Relevance Person
Stephanie Vaughan
Steph Vaughan is the founder of Seven Seas Capital and previously was Head of Operations at Sommelier and Chief Financial Officer at Elixxir. She previously served as Director of Capital Markets and Development at StreetShares, where she focused on providing small business loans. She holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School and a BA in Quantitative Economics from the United States Naval Academy. A former captain in the United States Marine Corps, she served as communications and operations officer and held strategic roles assisting in re-designing the USMC Force and overseeing anti-terrorism efforts for U.S. Central Command in Afghanistan.
Unique Divine
Unique is co-founder and Lead Software Engineer at Nibiru Chain, a layer 1 blockchain built on Cosmos. Prior to Nibiru, he was part of the Sommelier Protocol team, where he was able to leverage his skills in Golang, Cosmos SDK, Python, Solidity, TypeScript, and Google Cloud Platform. Before that, he was a data scientist at IBM. Unique studied at Columbia University and has a Master's Degree in Applied Mathematics.
Lucy W.
Lucy W. is the Vice President of Marketing at Horizen and previously served as Director of Brand and Marketing at Horizen Labs. She is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom.
Arun Devabhaktuni
Arun Devabhaktuni is a professional with a background in systems biology, physics, and biology. He is currently a Lead Researcher at Mirana Ventures and an Angel Investor at Valhalla Capital. He has also served as the Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder of ZenMaid Software. Arun has received a PhD in Systems Biology from Stanford University School of Medicine and a BS in Physics and Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dan Elitzer
Dan Elitzer is co-founder at Nascent. Previously, Dan co-founded IDEO CoLab Ventures, a crypto-focused venture firm associated with the renowned design agency, IDEO. During that time, he also helped launch YAM Finance. Dan began his career in social enterprise and microfinance, working with both domestic social impact organizations and international development agencies. Dan earned an MBA from MIT Sloan, where he co-founded the MIT Bitcoin Club and MIT FinTech Club, and a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Pomona College.
Theo Diamandis
Theo is pursuing an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science PhD at MIT, where he works on algorithms for and applications of mathematical optimization. These interests inevitably led to him being nerd sniped by Guillermo into working on crypto. When he’s not working on optimization solvers for DeFi-related applications, Theo can be found backpacking or skiing in the California Sierras.
Dan Roberts
Dan is the Editor in Chief at Variant. He has been writing about crypto since 2011. Prior to joining Variant, Dan was Editor in Chief at crypto news site Decrypt, where he recruited a team of writers and editors, led the site’s news strategy, created and hosted the gm podcast, planned and emceed live events, and moderated panels at conferences around the world. Before that, he spent five years at Yahoo Finance and five years at Fortune. He has written about tech, sports business, and books for a broad range of publications including Sports Illustrated, TIME, Vice, Air Mail, The Guardian, The Paris Review, NPR, Deadspin, Salon, The Daily Beast, The Morning News, and many more. He is the primary author of the 2013 book “Zoom: How to Supercharge Your Career.” He graduated from Middlebury College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
Kevin Zhang
Kevin has led early-stage investments in financial technology and developer products since joining Bain Capital Ventures in 2017. Prior to Bain Capital, Kevin was the first business hire and Head of Product at Fundera, a lending marketplace acquired by NerdWallet (NASDAQ: NRDS). After hard weeks in the email salt mines, Kevin likes to catch Magic: the Gathering prereleases and watch Team Liquid play Starcraft.
Srini Dhulipala
Srini Dhulipala is a General Partner at New Form managing Liquid Opportunities. He has 20+ years of experience running business verticals in risk management, portfolio construction and trading. Formerly, he was CIO & Founder of Kildonan Castle Asset Management; Head of Proprietary Credit trading and Global Head of Credit trading at Merrill Lynch/Bank of America; Credit Derivatives trader at Morgan Stanley. A former automotive design engineer, Srini holds and MBA from Columbia University and MS (Mech Eng) from Virginia Tech.
Hart Lambur
Hart Lambur is Co-founder of UMA Protocol. He is a believer in Universal Market Access and decentralized finance. Previously, he was the founder of Openfolio, a trader at Goldman Sachs, and a Computer Science graduate from Columbia University.