Board of Directors
Alan Fairless
Alan Fairless is the co-founder of SpiderOak. He has spent a decade building and bringing privacy-preserving cloud tech to market. Companies Alan founded have served hundreds-of-millions of users and received acquisition offers from public companies in the US and EU. He has discovered serious vulnerabilities in code authored at Red Hat and Google. Alan was an angel investor in the Electric Coin Company.
Christina Garman
Christina Garman is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. Her research interests focus largely on practical and applied cryptography, namely the design and analysis of real world cryptographic systems.
Zaki Manian
Zaki Manian is a Co-Founder of Sommelier, the most powerful coprocessor yet for DeFi traders and Liquidity Providers. He’s also a Co-Founder of iqlusion, which provides infrastructure like a data center and a Cosmos validator for next-gen crypto technologies. Previously, Zaki helped build the Cosmos ecosystem, including launching the first public Cosmos testnet, and served as a director of Tendermint. Zaki has been a leading developer in the blockchain space since 2014, when he taught himself cryptography and began contributing to projects including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, and Tendermint. Having studied history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, Zaki’s skill sets in software engineering, programming, and computer science are largely self-taught.
Paul Brigner
Paul is Head of Coinbase Institute and is renowned within the cryptocurrency policy community for spearheading the PGP* (Pretty Good Policy) initiative, which he started at ECC when he served as Head of Policy.
With an early career spanning over a decade in software development, Paul transitioned into policy, where he has since held high-ranking positions in notable organizations including Verizon, Internet Society, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Chamber of Digital Commerce, before ECC.
A U.S. Army veteran with an educational background marked by a JD and MBA from Georgetown, Paul combines technical proficiency with policy expertise, offering a rich perspective grounded in experience and academic excellence. His career is a testament to his commitment to fostering intelligent discourse and promoting advancements in the technology policy arena.
Michelle Lai
A graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (2007), Michelle has spent half her career in crypto and half in financial services, including stints at Anchorage Digital, Bitpay, Credit Suisse, a private equity buyout fund, and as a consultant to CEOs of large financial services companies. She’s performed a wide range of roles, including COO, BD and product roles, and says she most enjoys solving tricky business problems and managing high-stakes negotiations.
She is passionate about crypto-related technology as “a means of achieving a fairer and freer world.”
Josh Swihart
Executive Director
Josh Swihart is CEO at Electric Coin Co. (ECC) and executive director of Bootstrap. He was previously the CEO and an owner at Aspenware (exit to Aspen Ski Company and Alterra Resorts). He has also served as the SVP of Global Marketing for K2 (exit to Francisco Partners), a global practice principle for the Interlink Group (exit to EMC and TPG), and co-founder and VP of software development for 3t Systems.
Josh has received numerous global and national awards for leadership, marketing and solution delivery. He is an advocate for underserved and/or exploited people all over the world, most actively with those living in the slums of Mumbai and Pune, India.