Celo picks up key hires from a16z, Facebook’s Novi and Google

cLabs, the team building the mobile-first, proof-of-stake blockchain Celo, has picked up a few big hires in the last few weeks, according to a statement provided to The Block.

This month, cLabs hired Danielle Andrzejewski as head of commerce, to focus on international business partnerships for the Celo Alliance for Prosperity — a collaboration of more than 100 member companies. She comes from VC firm a16z, which backs Celo, where she co-led its fintech go-to-market team. (See this article for more details on VC firms helping out their portfolio companies with talent acquisition.)

At the same time, cLabs onboarded Chris Ostrowski as a partner in the public sector team. Ostrowski was formerly the chief revenue officer of the London-based Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum think tank and managing director of its Digital Money Institute. Between 2008 and 2017, he was also an election candidate for the U.K.’s Labour Party.

In June, the organization hired Alberto Martin as its head of product. Martin joins after an 18 year stint at Google. He spent a long time working on the Chrome OS Platform before becoming director of product management for payments, where he was responsible for “all money movement at Google,” per his LinkedIn profile.

In May, cLabs also sniped Eric Nakagawa from Facebook’s Novi project, where he was in charge of open source strategy and community efforts. Prior to that he had worked for Facebook for four years leading developer advocacy. Nakagawa will look to grow Celo’s developer community.