Tag Archive for: perseverance

Powering the Future: Caroline Friedman, COO, Bastion

Caroline FriedmanBy Jessica Darmoni

“With the GENIUS Act establishing a federal framework for stablecoin issuance, the window to define what responsible stablecoin infrastructure looks like is right now,” says Caroline Friedman. “That is a moment I wanted to be a part of, and it has been energizing to build a strong team at Bastion to seize it.”

Friedman is the COO and Board Member at Bastion, a financial institution purpose-built for stablecoin services, and she has spent her career preparing for exactly this kind of moment. A founding member of the company, she oversees legal, compliance, finance, operations, and go-to-market, and brings to the role something rare in the industry: extensive experience in both the public and private sectors.

She started as an associate attorney in the government regulations practice at Jones Day in Washington D.C., then became a federal prosecutor in the National Security and International Crimes Unit in the Eastern District of Virginia, and later in the Major Crimes Unit in Colorado. From there she moved into crypto as Chief of Staff and Regulatory Strategy Counsel at Kraken, then as Chief of Staff at a16z crypto, before co-founding Bastion.

From Courtroom to Crypto

The prosecutorial years set a standard Friedman has never lowered. “Federal cases demand precision. Every detail matters and the analysis has to hold up.” That same rigor now runs through every compliance framework and governance structure she builds at Bastion.

Her two Chief of Staff roles gave her something equally formative: a way of seeing across entire organizations at a moment when the crypto industry was still taking shape. At a16z, the vantage point was clarifying. “Sitting close to world-class investment partners and seeing dozens of companies up close was an education in pattern recognition. You see what separates the teams that scale from the teams that stall, and that lens stays with you.”

She is equally direct about what those platform roles built in her as an operator. “I learned how to operate across an entire organization, how to support leaders, how to be a force multiplier and how to build the connective tissue that keeps fast-moving teams aligned. These kinds of roles can shape a career in ways that are hard to replicate elsewhere.”

Built for This Moment

Bastion’s full-stack product suite covers custodial wallet infrastructure, global asset conversion rails, and white-label stablecoin issuance, serving banks, fintechs, and global enterprises that need to move money faster, settle cross-border transactions efficiently, and operate under controls that hold up to scrutiny. Friedman is unambiguous about where the market stands.

“It is clear that the market has shifted. Stablecoins are no longer a niche conversation. There is a federal framework to anchor on, banks are issuing, and enterprises are integrating. There is a lot happening, and Bastion was built for this moment.”

Her compliance-first philosophy is not defensive posturing. It is rooted in a conviction about what makes the technology genuinely valuable.

“Stablecoins are showing up in everyday commerce, corporate treasury and local payment networks. The technology can reach people, businesses, and corridors that the existing system hasn’t served well, but that promise only matters if it gets built in a way that is safe and secure. Regulations exist for a reason. They are there to protect consumers.”

Delegation, Endurance, and the Lego Principle

Building a regulated financial institution from the ground up, Friedman says, requires a specific kind of staying power. “It is a long, often quiet practice in perseverance, dedication, diligence, and constant curiosity. The hardest moments are not always the obvious ones. They are the stretches where the path forward is not yet clear and the only thing to do is keep showing up.”

Her most reliable reset is her children. “There is a clarity that comes from stepping away from screens and into a context where the only thing required of me is to be present. Parenting is the ultimate forcing function. It sharpens what actually matters.”

On the leadership principle she repeats most often, she credits Molly Graham: “Give away your Legos. Every time the company expands, parts of your job have to belong to someone else. The leaders who cannot let go become bottlenecks. The ones who can, who actually celebrate handing something off, make room for the next thing the company needs from them.”

Alongside it, she returns to a second frame: “It is a marathon, not a sprint. The work we are doing at Bastion takes years, not months, and the teams that build something durable are the ones that protect their pace.”

Advice for the Next Generation

For women earlier in their careers, Friedman’s guidance is concrete. Start by understanding the business as a whole, not just your function. “What are the real priorities? Where are the gaps? Who needs to be aligned? The people who build influence early in their careers are the ones who can hold that context and act on it, and that reputation compounds over time.”

Seek roles that stretch, even the ones that resist easy explanation. “The jobs where you have to context-switch constantly, solve ambiguous problems, and get things over the line across multiple workstreams build range. Range is what makes you a strong leader later.”

And take opportunities early, even unconventional ones.

“I interned for free for countless summers through college, law school, and post-grad. Those experiences shaped my career path, helped me build a network early and gave me the confidence to keep exploring. You can create your own narrative, and the skills you build along the way are almost always more applicable than they look at the time. Mine is what gave me the confidence to take a Bastion-sized risk in building a company.”

The Skills That Will Matter Most

On the qualities that will define future leaders, Friedman’s answers are grounded: listening and professionalism. “Most of the time, people are either talking or thinking about what they want to say next, rather than actually hearing the person across from them. Real listening is the greatest gift you can offer in any moment, to a customer, a colleague, a partner. It is also where the best decisions start.”

By professionalism, she means something more than presentation. “Showing up consistently, treating every person you encounter with respect regardless of their seniority, following through on commitments, and bringing the same rigor to the routine work as you do to the high profile work. In an industry where credibility is currency, that consistency matters.”

As for what she hopes Bastion stands for in the end, she points to what gets built on top of it.

“What I am most excited about is what our customers will build on top of Bastion. The innovative, delightful products that will change the way people and businesses use money.” And for the industry itself: “I would like to look back and feel like the frameworks we built at Bastion, the conversations we had with regulators, and the way we ran the company helped move the industry forward.”

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Melandee Jones Canady, Delivery Executive, AARP

Melandee Jones CanadyOver the years, AARP’s Melandee Jones Canady has learned that if you’re not upfront about letting people know your accomplishments, it opens the door for others to create your narrative on your behalf.

“I wish I had been more vocal early on; I was a doer quietly performing my work, until someone pulled me aside and said I needed to start broadcasting more of my achievements.” That helped raise her profile, which is paramount to success in any career.

A Career Based on All Paths Taken

The unifying thread behind Canady’s career is that she believed in seizing opportunities and seeing where they could take her. The result has been a successful marriage of technology and business skillsets, aligned toward making life easier for the customer.

An IT executive with 20 years of experience, she follows in the footsteps of her father, who sparked her interest when he would discuss his work with data centers and mainframes at the dinner table. She studied law and technology, and subsequent internships at IBM, Lockheed Martin and Allstate solidified her interest in technology, while opening her eyes to all the different opportunities in the field.

She started her career with Enovia , which had a rotation program that exposed her to a wide variety of skills, from client/server development to software testing.  It was testing where she discovered “that she was great at breaking things and handing them off for someone else to fix them.” Eventually she left for the world of consulting, then worked on an international project for a reinsurance company and finally settled into financial services.

Canady joined Ally Bank, where she was impressed with the innovative ideas they were launching. She was part of its rebrand as a direct bank, where she was able to use her skills to create seamless and secure technology, which she realized was the only chance to make an impression on customers when there’s no brick-and-mortar presence.  While there she earned her MBA and moved from systems analysis to a business-oriented role that bolstered her understanding of voice of the customer as she partnered to find out their needs and desired outcomes.

Soon she was recruited by a consulting company to support TIAA (then TIAA-CREF) which also wanted to set up a direct bank, as she was one of the few with the skillset. Eventually she decided to move to Washington, D.C., and worked with Deloitte Consulting specializing in systems integration, which she says was among her most satisfying work stints, given the many new experiences and opportunities to adapt what she had learned over the years in a client-facing role.

Almost four years ago, she was recruited to AARP where she interfaces between the technology departments and business partners to bridge gaps. “Working for an association gives you a fascinating view into how you can serve your 37+ million members, compared with working for shareholders,” she says, adding that it perfectly combines her background in voice of the customer and business outcomes as she serves its members and the community at large.

Today she is helping launch programs around artificial intelligence (AI), specifically working on the first level of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to help make AARP more efficient. “With almost 38 million members and only 2,400 employees, it’s a puzzle to figure out how to support everything. RPA can automate rote tasks to allow staff to work on more exciting projects,” Canady explains.

While she’s had a number of satisfying professional experiences, she also counts among her achievements some of the programs she’s been involved with outside of work, such as testing software with the United Nations, along with a wide variety of mentoring and training efforts she’s helped with, including both formal and informal affinity groups.

One that she has particularly enjoyed is Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA), along with a Women in Technology group set up by her former boss at AARP. “As a female CIO, her goal was to show how others can follow in her path, which has opened doors and created conversations that otherwise wouldn’t have happened,” she says.

Helping Others Grow

And that often leads her to give advice to younger professionals. One of the first things Canady tells them is that it’s OK to stand out. “I’ve been on numerous teams where I’m the only woman, the only African American, or even the only American.” She finds there is still a persistent perception of what a “technologist” looks like. “People expect you to look a certain way or have a certain background, so I work to dispel that myth and emphasize we are all different,” she says. And she adds, that’s important for business success, too, since the more diverse teams are, the better the outcomes.

She also thinks it’s important for women to realize that career pivots are not just normal, they are often better. “It’s fine to remember what you wanted when you were first starting, but it’s wise to realize that your end game might change—and it might end up even better than you expected.  The key to that is perseverance: Don’t let others discourage you; if there’s an assignment you want, raise your hand,” she says.

With her husband and two small children—a two-and-a-half year old daughter and nine-month-old son—Canady stays busy on the homefront, traveling and just being together. But she still finds time to give back, participating in a Giving Circle where they pool money to make more of an impact for local charities, and as a member of the Junior League.

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