The Ava Labs team has collective experience from leading Fortune 500 finance and tech companies to high-growth blockchain companies. Ava Labs is the company behind the creation of Avalanche (AVAX). Avalanche (AVAX) was founded and officially launched by Emin Gun Sirer in September 2020. The Ava Labs is led by 4 key contributors with a company size of over 200 employees.

Emin Gun Sirer - Founder and CEO

He is the Founder and CEO of Ava Labs. He is also the founder of Avalanche protocol. He was an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University. He is known for his contributions to peer-to-peer systems, operating systems and computer networking. He is currently the Co-Director of IC3.

John Wu - President

He is the President of Ava Labs. He founded Sureview Capital with a strategic investment from Blackstone. He built and led the digital assets business at SharesPost that executed the first-ever custodied trade of digital securities. Currently he is on the Board of Directors at Alussa Energy (NYSE: ALUS) serving as head of the compensation committee and part of the audit committee.

Kevin Sekniqi – Chief Operating Officer

He is the Chief Operating Officer of Ava Labs. He was a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Cornell University conducting research in distributed systems, cryptography, security and economics.  He previously did research and software engineering at prominent organizations, including Microsoft and NASA.

Chris Lavery – Chief Financial Officer

He is the Chief Operating Officer of Ava Labs. He has nearly 20 years of experience in leadership roles within technology-driven environments. As Executive Vice President of Financial Strategy at Blockchain, he drove the finance rollout of his first crypto-currency exchange with significant near-term revenue potential.