Coinbase hires HR exec from one of Wall Street's largest hedge funds

Coinbase has hired another financial heavyweight, bringing in LJ Brock as Chief People Officer from Citadel— one of Chicago’s biggest hedge funds, The Block has learned. 

In an email to Coinbase’s entire staff, CEO Brian Armstrong said he was “really excited” about the HR hire, believing Brock will fit in well with the company’s culture and help improve “employee experience.”

This is a big hire for the U.S. exchange, which earlier this year annulled plans to bring on Wall Street veteran Jonathan Kellner following a company restructuring around their institutional sales strategy.

Brock is a 20-year technology veteran, having headed recruitment at software company Red Hat for nearly a decade before joining Kenneth Griffin's Citadel in 2016. In a 2017 interview, he said he was driven by identifying top talent and nurturing the best minds within companies, and modelled the growth of Citadel's 1,400-strong workforce on the hiring practices used by NASA and the NFL.

In his role, Brock is expected to focus on overseeing both recruitment and internal cohesion as the company scales, which reportedly became a 500-person strong team last September. 

Brock will begin at Coinbase in the last week of the month.