The Celo Foundation has announced significant changes in its senior leadership to better support its ecosystem development. Eric Nakagawa has been promoted to Executive Director, overseeing daily operations and working closely with President Rene Reinsberg. Sophia Dew joins as the new head of Developer Relations, bringing her experience from Gitcoin’s Public Goods Network to guide Celo’s migration to an Ethereum Layer-2 platform. Isha Varshney has been promoted to Head of Ecosystem, tasked with overseeing the collaboration and support for over 1,000 global projects building on Celo. These leadership changes come as Celo continues to evolve and expand its influence in the blockchain space, aiming to foster a more regenerative and equitable future.

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<h3>Celo Foundation Promotes Eric Nakagawa to Executive Director and Isha Varshney to Head of Ecosystem, Hires Sophia Dew to Lead Developer Relations</h3>The senior leadership expansion primes the Foundation to support the Celo ecosystem amidst an ongoing migration to Ethereum Layer-2Today, the <a href="https://celofoundation.org/" target="_blank">Celo Foundation</a> announced the expansion of senior leadership roles as the organization adjusts its structure to best shepherd the ecosystem development of <a href="http://celo.org" target="_blank">Celo</a>, an Ethereum Layer-2 and mobile-first, carbon-negative blockchain built for the real world and designed for fast, low-cost payments worldwide.Included in the evolution of Celo Foundation is the creation of an Executive Director role, which oversees the daily operations of the non-profit organization stewarding the blockchain network, working closely with Celo Foundation President Rene Reinsberg. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericnakagawa/" target="_blank">Eric Nakagawa</a> was promoted to the new position following nearly three years as Head of Developer Relations at Celo Foundation, where he worked with builders throughout the ecosystem, and with infrastructure partners to facilitate the continued growth of Celo’s 1,000+ dApps in over 150 countries.Eric joined the Celo ecosystem from roles with Facebook and subsidiary Novi Financial, where he served as Head of Open Source, Blockchain. His role was instrumental in developing Facebook’s Diem blockchain and the creation of the Move language, a smart contract language now used by leading open-source networks throughout the Web3 industry. Eric’s entrepreneurial journey includes founding the early meme website <a href="https://icanhas.cheezburger.com/" target="_blank">icanhazcheezburger</a>, reaching millions of monthly visitors, and inspiring a New York Times Bestseller which Nakagawa co-authored. Additional endeavors in mobile application development led to his co-creation of simplehoney, a consumer mobile application <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2013/04/03/1146539/0/en/simplehoney-Acquired-by-Ripple-Developer-OpenCoin.html" target="_blank">acquired</a> by Ripple Labs in 2013. With the acquisition, Eric joined the early Ripple team, then known as OpenCoin, to drive consumer adoption and lead growth operations before launching initiatives around Dogecoin-based philanthropy.As executive director, Eric has joined Celo founders Sep Kamvar, Marek Olszewski, and Rene Reinsberg, as well as Morgan Beller, Jai Ramaswamy, and Richard Parsons on the Celo Foundation board.As Eric steps into the Executive Director role, the Celo Foundation welcomes <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiadew" target="_blank">Sophia Dew</a> to lead Developer Relations. From her previous work as Tech Lead for Gitcoin’s Public Goods Network (PGN), Sophia gained insights into developers’ unique needs and motivations building on Layer-2s atop Optimism’s OP Stack. This expertise will provide critical guidance to the Celo developer community as core contributor cLabs migrates Celo to an Ethereum Layer-2 leveraging the OP Stack. The perspective Sophia gained both from her recent role with Public Goods Network and previously at Funding the Commons will also be instrumental in helping developers navigate the recently launched Celo Public Goods process, funding innovation, and impact from global builders on Celo.“I’m thrilled to join the Celo Foundation and support builders as they create a more regenerative and equitable future,” said DevRel Lead, Sophia Dew. “The Celo ecosystem, and this role, align perfectly with my passion for environmental sustainability, financial inclusion, and helping great ideas grow. As we approach the CEL2 testnet launch, I look forward to bringing my experience to help shape Celo’s future during this pivotal moment.”<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/isha-varshney-b758001b/" target="_blank">Isha Varshney</a>, former Head of DeFi, has also been promoted following over two years leading DeFi partnerships and strategy within the Celo Foundation’s Ecosystem team. In her new role as Head of Ecosystem, Isha oversees collaboration with and support for the 1,000+ global projects building on Celo. The Head of Ecosystem position also encompasses business development initiatives, a natural expansion of Isha’s previous position where she played a critical role in ecosystem partnerships and integrations.“Over the past 12 months, Celo has seen a significant rise in activity evident by its consistent top 10 ranking across all ecosystems by DAUs and surpassing 400M total transactions to date — growth which Eric and Isha have been instrumental in supporting,” said Celo Co-Founder and Celo Foundation President Rene Reinsberg. “I’m excited that their positions will bring additional leadership capacity to help guide our organization through this transformative period driven by the Celo L2 transition and key initiatives such as Opera’s <a href="https://www.opera.com/products/minipay" target="_blank">MiniPay</a> wallet, the TGE advisory initiative <a href="https://medium.com/celoorg/celo-foundation-announces-bloom-an-advisory-for-ecosystem-projects-on-their-tge-journey-8602c35ead0f" target="_blank">Bloom</a>, and forthcoming partnerships. I am also thrilled to welcome Sophia to the team — we’ve been impressed by her work on PGN and contributions to Celo Public Goods and look forward to her supporting the next wave of Celo builders.”About CeloCelo is an emerging Ethereum Layer-2 and mobile-first blockchain network built for the real world and designed for fast, low-cost payments worldwide. The Celo ecosystem consists of a §decentralized, proof-of-stake blockchain technology stack (the Celo Platform), the CELO native token, USDC and USDT (both enabled as gas currencies), several Mento stable assets (cUSD, cEUR, cREAL, cKES, eXOF), and popular, blue chip infrastructure including Uniswap V3, Curve, Chainlink, Safe, and Rarible, among others. Launched on Earth Day in 2020, the open-source Celo mainnet supports a rich ecosystem of projects (1,000+) contributing to Celo’s global mission of prosperity for all. For more about Celo, visit <a href="https://celo.org/." target="_blank">https://celo.org/.</a><img src=''/><hr /><a href="https://blog.celo.org/celo-foundation-promotes-eric-nakagawa-to-executive-director-and-isha-varshney-to-head-of-a402d8606720" target="_blank">Celo Foundation Promotes Eric Nakagawa to Executive Director and Isha Varshney to Head of…</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.celo.org" target="_blank">The Celo Blog</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Celo Foundation Announces Leadership Changes to Boost Ecosystem Development