Meet United States’s 8 Top CIO’s in the Blockchain Startup Space

At Bleeding.Technology we track over 100,000 web 3.0, NFT, DeFi & crypto startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.

This list showcases the top United States based CIO’ operating in the Blockchain space. If you think a CIO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on [email protected].

The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:

Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.

Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.

Eddie Schwartz

Chief Information Security Officer of Block.one

Eddie is responsible for the strategy and daily direction of Block.one’s global cyber security program. He is a cyber security veteran with a career spanning three decades in the IT and software sectors. He has held numerous executive leadership positions at large-scale corporates and early stage companies, among which include EVP of Cyber Services for DarkMatter, LLC, Chief Operating Officer for the pioneering advertising fraud firm WhiteOps, Inc., VP and Global Leader for Cyber Security Solutions at Verizon, VP and Chief Security Officer for RSA. Eddie has also led global security industry working groups as a member of the International Board of Directors of ISACA and Chairman of ISACA’s Global Cyber Security Taskforce and is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Banking Industry Technology Secretariat of the U.S. Financial Services Roundtable.

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About Block.one: Block.one is a software company specializing in high-performance blockchain technologies.

Mario Lazaro

Co-Founder. CIO of Ember Fund

Mario Lazaro is the Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer at Ember Fund. He was the Engineer Manager of GumGum prior to that. He studied Computer Science in both Spain and Finland and he holds a M.Sc in Computer Science.

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About Ember Fund: Ember Fund develops a mobile app to invest like a cryptocurrency hedge fund.

Larry Sanger

Chief Information Officer of Distributed Machines

Larry Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium. He grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. From an early age he has been interested in philosophy. Sanger received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Reed College in 1991 and a Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy from Ohio State University in 2000. Most of his philosophical work has focused on epistemology, the theory of knowledge. He has been involved with various online encyclopedia projects. He is the former editor-in-chief of Nupedia, chief organizer (2001–2002) of its successor, Wikipedia, and founding editor-in-chief of Citizendium. From his position at Nupedia, he assembled the process for article development. Sanger proposed implementing a wiki, which led directly to the creation of Wikipedia. Initially Wikipedia was a complementary project for Nupedia. He was Wikipedia’s early community leader and established many of its original policies. He spearheaded an alternative wiki-based project, Citizendium. Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002, and has since been critical of the project. He articulated that despite its merits, Wikipedia lacks credibility due to, among other things, a lack of respect for expertise. After leaving the project, Sanger taught philosophy at Ohio State University and was an early strategist for the expert-authored Encyclopedia of Earth. On September 15, 2006 he publicly announced Citizendium, first envisioned as a fork of Wikipedia. It was launched on March 25, 2007. Citizendium represents an effort to create a credible and free-access encyclopedia. Sanger had aimed to bring more accountability to the Internet encyclopedia model. He is currently working on developing educational projects for individuals behind WatchKnowLearn and is designing a program to teach children how to read. He started blogging on various subjects, including baby reading. He also works part-time as a writer, speaker, and consultant on the topic of collaborative online communities.

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About Distributed Machines: Distributed Machines, Inc. serves as a parent company for ventures in the blockchain, distributed ledger and education industry.

Narinder Bajwa

Founder & CIO of Gluon

Narinder Bajwa, Founder & CIO, was CTO and Chief Software Architect at Infonox, a FinTech company specializing in financial payments. He was instrumental in writing Infonox’s payment platform which led to the company’s acquisition by TSYS. He brings his advanced knowledge of banking systems and software to the current secure structure of the Gluon platform. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering and a master’s degree in computer science from the India Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB).

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About Gluon: Platform to connect businesses, consumers, and automobiles using IoT, AI, and Blockchain.

Rajat Rajbhandari

CIO of dexFreight

Expert in Transportation Research, Operations, and Technology Research Engineer, Texas A&M University |Co-founder TruckIN Europe UG | Blockchain Speaker | 15+ years in transportation research

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About dexFreight: FinTech-enabled market network for freight companies to handle shipments from booking to payment in one place using smart contracts.

Kevin Lupowitz

Chief Information Officer of TassatPay

Kevin Lupowitz is the Chief Information Officer at TassatPay. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science at the Brooklyn CollegeBrooklyn College.

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About TassatPay: TassatPay is a developer of a digital blockchain platform for digital payments and exchange markets.