The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to fulfilling the global promise of blockchain’s potential for financial empowerment. As part of our move to the U.S., we are proud to introduce a refreshed Board of Directors, a group of visionary leaders with deep expertise spanning fintech, global policy, cybersecurity, and traditional finance.
These crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) visionaries bring decades of experience from organizations like FinCEN, the U.S. Treasury, and MoneyGram, ensuring the Foundation remains at the forefront of innovation while maintaining the highest standards of regulatory compliance and operational excellence.
Together, they will guide our mission to scale the Algorand ecosystem and deliver real-world impact through sustainable and secure blockchain solutions.
Bill Barhydt, Board Chair
Bill Barhydt, born in New York City and currently residing in Silicon Valley, is a serial entrepreneur and 30-year pioneer in internet technologies.
He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Abra, the world's leading crypto investment platform. Abra has onboarded hundreds of thousands of crypto investors into this new and exciting space. Bill is a well-known advisor and investor in dozens of start-ups and venture funds ranging from consumer internet and frontier tech to crypto and space.
Before starting Abra, Bill spent 10 years working on mobile money and financial inclusion projects throughout the world and consulted to many governments, aid agencies and telecoms on mobile banking deployments. This led Bill to Bitcoin in 2011.
As a globally recognized expert in internet and mobile technologies, Bill has presented at over 100 conferences, including the World Economic Forum, the U.S. State Department, the Mobile World Congress and TED, where he gave the first-ever TED Talk on Bitcoin in 2011 when BTC was trading at $3.00.
Bill started his career working at the CIA on secure messaging systems and at NASA developing infrastructure for the early Internet. As one of the early team members of Netscape, Bill was involved in building some of the core infrastructure that helped grow the consumer Internet we all know and use every day, such as HTTPS and hosted email.
Alex Holmes
Alex Holmes is a globally recognized leader in fintech with deep expertise in payments, digital assets, banking and compliance. He currently serves as Executive Vice Chairman of United Texas Bank, and as a member of the Board and Audit Committee at Bitcoin Depot (NASDAQ: BTM). He also serves as a strategic advisor, investor, and board member to several early-stage fintech and payments companies, including Orobit.ai, Brightwell, and Jingle Pay.
From 2016 to 2024, Alex served as Chairman and CEO of MoneyGram International, where he transformed the company into a global fintech powerhouse spanning more than 200 countries and territories. Over his 16
year tenure, he also held executive roles as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and COO, earning a reputation for operational excellence, disciplined risk management, and deep expertise in global regulatory compliance.
A pioneer in blockchain adoption, Alex spearheaded MoneyGram’s integration of distributed ledger technology in 2019 and stablecoins in 2022, well ahead of the industry curve. He also initiated the landmark MoneyGram/Haas F1 Team sponsorship in 2022 and led the company’s $2 billion sale to Madison Dearborn
Partners in 2023.
Renowned for driving innovation while fostering people-first cultures, Alex has championed initiatives focused on financial inclusion, compliance excellence, and employee engagement. Under his leadership, MoneyGram was recognized as one of America’s Most Trustworthy Companies, and awarded Best Place to Work
and Top Workplace (2022–2025).
Alex holds a B.S. in Accounting and an M.S. in Information Technology from the University of Colorado. He also serves on the non-profit board of Vogel Alcove and is a member of YPO Global One.
A frequent commentator on global payments and financial policy, Alex has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, CoinDesk, CNN, and Bloomberg, and is a regular speaker at leading industry conferences worldwide.
Michael Mosier
Michael Mosier co-founded Arktouros PLLC, a legal boutique of former in-house counsel and senior government officials dedicated to emergent technology, financial integrity, and civil society. He helped launch ex/ante, an early-stage fund investing in tools that advance human agency and democratic resilience. He has twice been the first in-house counsel at tech companies: Chainalysis (blockchain analytics) and EspressoSystems (configurable privacy and cross-chain composability).
In public service, Michael served as Acting Director, Deputy Director, and the first Digital Innovation Officer of the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN); Counselor for Cybersecurity & Emerging Technology to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury; Associate Director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC); Deputy Chief in the Department of Justice’s Money Laundering & Asset Recovery Section; and a Director at the White House National Security Council.
He also serves as a board member of the Security Alliance (SEAL), a nonprofit coordination center for crypto threat intelligence sharing, emergency response, and industry security standards development, and the DeFi Education Foundation, advocating for sound DeFi policy, protecting the rights of developers and users, and building understanding of decentralized finance.
Rebecca Rettig
Rebecca Rettig is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Legal Officer (CLO) at Jito Labs, overseeing all operational, legal, policy and regulatory matters. As COO, Rebecca drives operational strategy and organizational efficiency across the Company, focusing on scaling Jito’s current and future initiatives and processes. In this capacity, she works cross-functionally to optimize workflows and build systems that enable the team to deliver on its technical mission.
As CLO, Rebecca navigates the complex and evolving legal and regulatory landscape surrounding blockchain technology. She leads Jito Labs’ approach to compliance, risk management, and strategy, while also working to shape global policy on some of the most challenging issues in the space, including DeFi and maximal extractable value (MEV). Rebecca is a pioneer in shaping legal and regulatory frameworks for blockchain systems and applications, advising on matters including decentralization, token launches and mechanisms, DeFi, structuring, and decentralized governance.
Rebecca began her legal career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP; she was a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, and currently is Of Counsel at Arktouros PLLC. She has been recognized as one of Crain’s Top Women Lawyers in New York City.
Rebecca is a member of the New York Department of Financial Services’ Virtual Currency
Advisory Group and previously served as a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Global Markets Advisory Committee’s Digital Asset Subcommittee. She also serves as a board member of the DeFi Education Fund.
Staci Warden
Staci Warden, CEO of Algorand Foundation, and a board member since 2021, will continue serving on the board. Before joining the Algorand Foundation as its CEO, she ran the Global Market Development practice at the Milken Institute, where she led its work on capital market development and innovative finance.
Prior to Milken, she spent eight years at JPMorgan, where she ran the public sector practice for EMEA (London) and worked in sovereign debt capital markets (New York). Before JPM, Staci led the two microcap markets at the Nasdaq. Earlier in her career, Staci was the founding COO of the Center for Global Development and an international economist at the U.S. Treasury Department and the Harvard Institute for International Development.
Staci speaks widely and writes on the promise and practical implications of blockchain and related Web3 technologies, and provides ministerial-level advisory on capital market development and financial inclusion. She served as the Board Chair of the Rwandan Capital Markets Authority for seven years and has held a range of other BOD and advisory board appointments.
Strengthening our vision
The diverse collective expertise of the Algorand Foundation Board will provide us with invaluable guidance as we navigate the evolving blockchain landscape. We look forward to working together with our new Board of Directors to drive meaningful, real-world adoption of the Algorand protocol for innovation and financial empowerment.
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