BlockFi announced on Wednesday that it has onboarded Lei Lei as its new Director of Institutional Sales for Real Money Clients.
Recently announced in a press release, Lei Lei, an experienced institutional sales executive with experience across fixed income products, has been appointed by BlockFi, a US-based Crypto Lending platform, as its Director of Real Money Clients, Institutional Sales.
The focus of her role will be on endowments, pension funds, asset managers, insurance companies, corporate entities and sovereign wealth funds. Moreover, Lei will be responsible for further expanding BlockFi’s Institutional platform, which serves the unique trading, financing and strategy needs of institutional clients.
A Look Back at Lei’s Vocation
Before joining BlockFi, Lei worked on Investments for Capital last year in the Greater New York City area. Part of her responsibilities included building on investor partnerships with LPs and GPs, the Fintech Venture Debt fund and private credit, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Earlier to her experience at Capital, Nomura Bank employed Lei initially in Emerging Market Fixed Income Sales. For two years, she focused on distributing liquid and illiquid credit products to Real Money and Hedge Fund clients on top of other duties. Her success in this role led to her promotion to Vice President of fixed income sale in 2014. As VP, She was in charge of sales coverage for Tier 1 Sovereign Wealth Funds and Central Banks with a total AUM of more than US$5 Trillion.
Additionally, at Deutsche Bank, she originally began as a Sales and Trading Intern in the Hong Kong office. Her achievements led to the appointment in Alternative Credit Investing / Structured Solutions. Over the next four years, she was involved in Investing and Deal Experience. From there she advanced to Emerging Market Alternative Fixed Income Sales Associate. For the next year, she worked with the Head of Emerging Markets to distribute loans, structured credit and illiquid securities.
Prior to Deutsche Bank, Lei was a Research Manager and also an Associate Brand Manager at Time Inc. Over the three year period, the bank awarded her the Time Inc. Presidential Award where she was one of the youngest to receive it. Part of the duties involved analysing large amounts of data by writing computer programs in statistical software (SPLUSS, SAS).
Expansion into New Markets
Furthermore, Lei has significant experience managing institutional relationships and structuring alternative fixed income products. Based in New York, She holds a B.S. in Economics and Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
David Olsson, Global Head of Institutional Distribution at BlockFi said: “We’re excited to have Lei join BlockFi as we continue to expand into new markets and focus on the needs of real money investors who will allocate capital to the digital asset space across a number of strategies, from pure directional to arbitrage. Her proven leadership and expertise will allow us to continue our expansion of services just as institutional clients look to gain exposure to digital assets.”
“As institutional clients increase their appetite for Cryptocurrencies , companies like BlockFi are critical to connecting traditional strategies with this exciting emerging asset class,” added Lei. “I’m excited to help traditional institutions navigate their entry into the digital asset space with BlockFi’s market-leading platform.”
