Startups rely on seasoned board members’ expertise

Sygnum, the world’s first digital asset bank, and a digital asset specialist with global reach has strengthened its core technology leadership team and digital transformation capabilities with the addition of two executives to its Board of Directors, Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao, CEO of SBI Digital Asset Holdings, and Al-Noor Ramji, Tata Motors board member and former Prudential Chief Digital Officer. Both technology leaders join Sygnum at an important time. Following its January USD 90m funding round and reaching the milestones of USD 2 billion Assets under Administration and over 1,000 global clients, Sygnum is accelerating its plans to further scale its secure digital platform, enter new international markets and co-develop solutions with strategic investors.

Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao is an open-source software industry veteran with over twenty years of experience across technology innovation and governance, capital markets and digital assets and holds unparalleled knowledge of the Asian financial services sector from both a business and technical perspective. He is currently CEO of SBI Digital Asset Holdings, part of the TSE-listed financial conglomerate SBI Group, with advisory, tokenization and issuance, digital exchange, and digital custody business lines under his remit.

Al-Noor Ramji has extensive experience in large-scale transformations across the banking, technology and software industries, successfully leading organisations through phases of high growth and global expansion. He is a Tata Motors Board member and former Group Chief Digital Officer of Prudential plc, a listed global financial services group with over 18 million customers, where he founded and built the first Asian and African platform-based ecosystem businesses as well as the super app ‘Pulse” for the rapid growth of new generation customers. Prior to this, Al-Noor managed technology funds for Silicon Valley venture capital firm Northgate, and held CEO and EVP positions at Misys, BT Group, Calypso Technologies and the Swiss Bank Corporation.

Gycocera
GlycoEra AG, a biotechnology company building a high-value pipeline of medicines based on deep expertise in glycobiology and protein degradation announced key appointments of biotech industry leaders to its Board of Directors, including Georges Gemayel, as Chair, Philippe Dro, and Kush Parmar. Gemayel is an industry veteran with more than 30 years' experience including global management, executive positions and a range of board appointments. Dro is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Luciole Medical and has deep experience in biotech business strategy at various emerging biotechnology and medtech companies. Parmar is a physician-scientist and Managing Partner at 5AM Ventures, where he is focused on building next-generation life science companies.

Starmind
Michelle Chen has joined the Board of Directors of Starmind, an AI technology that seamlessly connects employees to expert knowledge they need in real-time. Chen is experienced in growing technology companies globally. For the past 20 years, she has held leadership positions in the US, Europe, and Asia. As Chief Product Officer at Typeform, Chen was instrumental in Typeform’s achievement of doubling Typeform’s revenue in just 18 months. She also has a proven track record of growing tech companies with their expansion into international markets, including US, Europe, and Asia. Chen’s most notable successes stem from her contributions to Uber China’s hypergrowth. During her tenure as the Head of Product, Uber China Growth & Expansion, Uber China’s valuation grew from $0.5B to $7B, and its market share increased from 1% to 20%+.

Zitadel
Martin Berweger has joined Zitadel’s board of directors. As a lawyer and notary with extensive knowledge in business law and vast experience with startups, Martin will support Zitadel in navigating the company. The cybersecurity startup developed an identity management platform based on its Go Programming language which allows developers to create, configure and operate complex authentication and authorisation systems in a short time.

(Press release/RAN)