Ali Rathod-Papier has stepped down from her role as global head of compliance at enterprise card spend management startup Brex to join venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as a partner and chief compliance officer, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
Rathod-Papier and a16z declined to comment on the move.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Rathod-Papier now “oversees a16z’s overseas expansion and policy efforts, supporting the government affairs team, financial crime and national security risk management, and overseas operations.” He was at Brex for a total of 2 ½ years, serving in a variety of roles including financial crime compliance before joining a16z in May.
Brex CFO Ben Gammell told TechCrunch that her departure was “amicable”, adding that Rathod-Papier had “made an invaluable contribution to financial management and compliance during her tenure at Brex” and helped position the startup “good growth” in its next chapter. .
Rathod-Papier shared the decision with his colleagues in April, according to a Slack announcement seen by TechCrunch. A Brex spokesperson told TechCrunch this week that the startup is currently hiring to fill the role. Meanwhile, Bruce Wallace, a longtime Brex adviser who previously served as COO at Silicon Valley Bank and head of risk and fraud operations at Wells Fargo, has taken on the role of interim chief compliance officer.
The hiring 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 missing about $85 million in client funds. The company is silent on the subject of the controversy surrounding Synapse. TechCrunch spoke to a16z’s fintech leaders and general partners Angela Strange and Anish Acharya in 2022 regarding the company’s strategy in the space. The company is not high profile fintech investments they 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 Garrett Marker recently took over as Brex’s new CRO. Most recently, Marker served as vice president of global sales at Braze, a cloud-based customer engagement platform for omnichannel marketing.
Adamic had taken over as CRO of Brex in May 2022 after the departure of Sam Blond, later joining Founders Fund as a partner, a role he ended up stepping down earlier this year. Previously, Adamic was with SAP Concur (Brex’s competitor) for over 16 years.
The moves come amid an announcement by Brex that it has abandoned its co-CEO model with co-founder Pedro Franchesci becoming sole chief executive 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 hinder the company’s growth, preventing its leadership from making faster decisions. They also feel that when Brex eventually goes public — which they don’t expect to happen until 2025 or later — that investors will be more attracted to a traditional model with a single CEO running the company.
Interestingly, in June 2023, Jason Mok, a former partner at 16z, joined Brex as head of startups.
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