Our people

SVRN's leadership and advisors bring decades of experience across regulated finance, decentralized infrastructure, and the research underpinning modern AI.

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Backed by

SVRN on the Nasdaq billboard, Times Square

Leadership

operators

Sal Ternullo

Chief Executive Officer

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Sal Ternullo is a founder, operator, and investor dedicated to helping global institutions adopt emerging technology responsibly. Before SVRN, he built KPMG's innovation practice, where he launched flagship products including Chain Fusion and Climate Accounting Infrastructure. Earlier, at State Street, Sal engineered enterprise risk and internal audit frameworks for machine learning and blockchain. He also backs transformative Web3 technologies as a Managing Partner at A100x Ventures.

David Schwed

Chief Operating Officer

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David Schwed is a recognized authority in digital assets and AI security, having architected protection strategies for the industry's most critical institutions. As a former CISO of Robinhood and Galaxy, and Global Head of Digital Assets Technology at BNY, he has led security at the intersection of traditional finance and DeFi. A founder with a successful exit at MASS Communications, David also shapes the field as Founding Director of the Katz School's Cybersecurity Master's Program and a strategic advisor to the NEAR Foundation.

Rabbina Aziz

Chief Financial Officer

Rabbina Aziz builds scalable financial infrastructure for regulated, high-growth environments. As the former Head of Finance, US at Crypto.com, she oversaw operations across fiat and digital assets during pivotal expansion. Previously the Chief Accounting Officer at TradeStation, Rabbina applies over two decades of banking and brokerage expertise to drive rigorous regulatory reporting, GAAP compliance, and strategic treasury management.

David Shack

Chief Marketing Officer

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David Shack is a versatile marketer and digital-finance brand-builder. Prior to SVRN, he led brand efforts at Republic and Flipside Crypto, driving growth for platforms ranging from AI-led onchain intelligence to institutional digital asset management. A former founder and early-stage operator, David is a Founding Partner at Syrens, a creative studio supporting design and strategy for frontier-tech brands.

Directors

board

Richard Muirhead

/ Founder / Fabric Ventures

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Richard Muirhead has backed open and decentralized infrastructure for over two decades. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of Fabric Ventures, an early institutional backer of token networks, and previously co-founded Firestartr and served as CEO of Tideway and Automic.

James Gereghty

/ Founding Partner / Kips Bay Consulting

James Gereghty is the Founding Partner of Kips Bay Consulting, where he advises institutions on governance, risk, and the operational demands of regulated digital-asset businesses. He brings decades of capital-markets and advisory experience to SVRN's board. (Draft bio — pending approval.)

Peter Marton

/ Chief Risk & Compliance Officer / Cari Network

Peter Marton is Chief Risk & Compliance Officer at Cari Network, where he leads risk, compliance, and regulatory strategy. His career spans risk and controls frameworks across banking and digital-asset operations. (Draft bio — pending approval.)

Nikolaos Veraros

/ Audit Committee Chair / CFA

Nikolaos Veraros has spent more than twenty years in shipping finance, advising shipping companies on capital markets and corporate finance. A CFA charterholder and former senior equity analyst at the National Bank of Greece, he lectures on shipping finance and economics at King's College London and ALBA in Athens. A director since 2021, he chairs SVRN's audit committee.

Alexios Chrysochoidis

/ Head of Trading / Eurobank Equities

Alexios Chrysochoidis has traded at the center of the Greek capital markets for more than two decades. He is General Manager and Head of Trading and Institutional Client Business at Eurobank Equities in Athens, and has served on the Athens Exchange's Markets Operation and Listings Committee since 2024. He holds electrical engineering degrees from Imperial College London and a master's in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University, and serves on SVRN's audit committee.

Advisors

counsel

Illia Polosukhin

/ Founder / NEAR Protocol

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Illia Polosukhin is a co-founder of NEAR Protocol and a co-author of the 2017 research that introduced the Transformer architecture underpinning modern AI. He advises SVRN on the protocol-level direction of agent-native infrastructure.

Lukasz Kaiser

/ Research / OpenAI

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Lukasz Kaiser is a researcher at OpenAI and a co-author of the Transformer architecture. His work spans the foundational models and reasoning systems that make autonomous agents possible.

Phillippe Sachs

/ Chief Business Officer / Nscale

Phillippe Sachs is Chief Business Officer at Nscale, building the commercial foundations for large-scale AI compute. He advises SVRN on the infrastructure economics of private, institutional AI. (Draft bio — pending approval.)

Jackie Kennedy

/ COO / QuickNode

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Jackie Kennedy is COO at QuickNode, scaling the developer infrastructure that powers onchain applications. She advises SVRN on operations and go-to-market across the NEAR ecosystem. (Draft bio — pending approval.)

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