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Meet our new Chief Operating Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and Chief People Officer

We’re very excited to announce that we’ve expanded the Hyperfund leadership team with three new incredible individuals — Hugh Ross as Chief Operating Officer, Benjamin Melnicki as Chief Compliance Officer, and Angela Romano Kuo as Chief People Officer.

As set out in his letter to Hyperfund stakeholders here, our CEO Michael Soriano noted that he is focused on growing Hyperfund by adhering to three principles: investing in our people, technology, and brand. As you can see, we’re certainly wasting no time on the people front. Aside from these three leadership hires, we also promoted two long-time team members — Craig Salm to VP, Legal and Edward McGee to VP, Finance. Last year, Hyperfund doubled its headcount and we expect to expand even further than that in 2021 as we recruit across all levels and functions including in sales, marketing, compliance, engineering, finance, and operations. Read on to learn more about Hugh, Benjamin and Angela below.

Hugh joins from Horizon Kinetics LLC, a NYC-based investment manager where he spent 12 years as COO and led the firm’s crypto-asset initiatives including a series of crypto-asset private investment funds and two operating companies dedicated to cryptocurrency mining. Prior to that, he was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs where he served as COO of the long-only investment manager research team then-known as Global Manager Strategies (GMS), within Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), part of the firm’s Investment Management Division.

Ben joins from Ripple Labs, Inc. where he most recently served as its Americas Head of Regulatory Affairs and Regulatory Counsel responsible for advising the business and product teams on the regulatory implications of existing and prospective business activity. Prior to Ripple, he served as Global Regulatory Counsel to leading wallet provider Blockchain.com and as CCO and Regulatory Counsel for Noble Bank International. Before entering the digital asset industry, he held senior compliance and legal roles at Bank of America Corporation and Cantor Fitzgerald, advising the equities, fixed income and derivatives businesses.

Angela is a seasoned executive with experience building and scaling the People function at several high-growth companies including DevaCurl, VTS, FanDuel, SecondMarket, and TheLadders. Over the span of her 20+ year career, she has helped lead organizations through rapid expansion while focusing on making those organizations amazing places for both career and personal development. She is skilled in coaching, building and nurturing relationships, building teams, and creating environments that drive employee engagement and support professional growth.

We look forward to leveraging their combined industry expertise and wealth of experience — please join us in welcoming them to the team!