Natalya Thakur

Powerlist Category: Senior Leaders

Natalya is the CEO of Knova, B2B infrastructure software that provides real-time, unified transaction management across traditional assets (cash, treasuries) and digital assets (stablecoins, tokenized funds, cryptocurrencies). Fintechs and financial institutions can easily incorporate digital assets into their existing operations workflows and transact across various systems with powerful automation.

This software solution has saved enterprise customers (1) years of development time, (2) up to 90%+ reduction on operation and transaction costs, and (3) provided new revenue opportunities through new types of scalable trades and programmed/automated asset management. The API-based software focused on scale, interoperability and programmability has been recognized globally by winning awards at the G20 Summit, and also receiving a prestigious grant from the NSF and White House. 

Natalya has served across a variety of financial and technology roles, including experiences at BlackRock, Google[X], Celo, IDEO CoLab, Morgan Stanley, the Hoover Institution, and as co-founder/advisor of Stanford’s Future of Digital Currency Initiative (a partnership with the United Nations) where she helps with standards setting for digital currency systems. She was also appointed to the advisory board for the Bretton Woods Committee, and serves on its Future of Finance Working Group and on the Membership Committee where she focuses on diversity. Through her committee work, she is published in several research papers at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets regarding settlement rails, tokenization, interoperability, programmability, stablecoins etc. 

She is an avid public speaker and angel investor/LP, her work has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, American Banker, Coindesk, BIS publications amongst others. As a founder and angel investor, Natalya actively advises and supports several female led start-ups and emerging funds. Earlier in her career she co-founded a non-profit catered to leadership and development workshops for middle school and high school girls. The curriculum impacts tens of thousands girls globally today. 

Her career has led her to work with top industry experts such as Condoleezza Rice, Marty Chavez, Darrell Duffie, Bill Dudley, David Mazieries, Nick Burns, Gary Gensler, Eric Schmidt,  Adrienne Harris, and many other executives from government, technology and finance.