Ali Rathod-Papier has left her role as global head of compliance at corporate card expense management startup Brex to join venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as a partner and compliance officer, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Rathod-Papier and a16z declined to comment on the move.
According to her Linkedin profile, Rathod-Papier now “oversees a16z’s foreign expansion and political efforts, supporting the government affairs team, managing financial crimes and national security risks, as well as overseas operations.” She was at Brex for a total of two and a half years, holding various roles, including head of financial crime compliance, before joining a16z in May.
Brex CFO Ben Gammell told TechCrunch that his departure was “amicable,” adding that Rathod-Papier “made invaluable contributions to financial management and compliance during his time at Brex” and helped position the startup. “good for growth” in your next chapter. .
Rathod-Papier shared the decision with colleagues in April, according to a Slack statement seen by TechCrunch. A Brex spokesperson told TechCrunch this week that the startup is currently hiring a replacement for his position. Meanwhile, Bruce Wallace, a long-term Brex advisor who previously served as chief operating officer at Silicon Valley Bank and head of risk and fraud operations at Wells Fargo, took on the role of acting chief compliance officer.
The hire comes at an interesting time for a16z, which had invested in Synapse, a banking-as-a-service startup that filed for bankruptcy in April and has since come under fire for an estimated $85 million in missing customer funds. The firm has remained silent on the subject of the controversy surrounding Synapse. TechCrunch spoke with a16z fintech leaders and general partners Strange Angela and Anish Acharya in 2022 on the company's strategy in the space. The company's high non-crypto profile financial technology investments include Wise, Affirm, Deel and Greenlight, among others.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch also learned this week that Doug Adamic is no longer Brex's chief revenue officer. The startup told us that Garrett Marker He recently took his place as Brex's new CRO. Marker most recently served as VP of Global Sales at Braze, a cloud-based customer engagement platform for multi-channel marketing.
Adamic had taken over as CRO of Brex in May 2022 after Sam Blond left, and then joined Founders Fund as a partner, a role he ended up resigning earlier this year. Previously, Adamic had been at SAP Concur (a Brex competitor) for over 16 years.
The moves come amid an announcement by Brex that it abandoned its co-CEO model with co-founder Pedro Franchesci becoming sole CEO and co-founder Henrique Dubugras taking over as chairman of the board.
The pair told TechCrunch earlier this month that they believed having two CEOs could be a bottleneck to the company's growth by preventing its leadership from making faster decisions. They also feel that when Brex finally goes public, something they don't anticipate happening until 2025 or later, investors will be more attracted to a traditional model of a single CEO running the company.
Interestingly, in June 2023, Jason Mok, former operating partner at 16z, joined Brex as head of new ventures.
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