CEO – J.D. Salbego A Web3 industry veteran and a strategic leader in the blockchain space for over seven years, J.D is the Founder and CEO of gDEX Metaverse. Prior to this, J.D. founded AnRKey X, a multi-release GameFi studio and one of the first to innovate GameFi back in 2020, and is a familiar name in the gaming, NFT, DeFi, and the Metaverse communities. Aside from being a startup mentor in the Web3 division of the global renowned accelerator Techstars, J.D. is also a Cointelegraph.com contributor & member of their Innovation Circle for Web3 Experts. He is frequently quoted by leading blockchain and crypto media, and is a Web3 keynote speaker at leading conferences around the world including the World Economic Forum. J.D. brings in visionary thinking and a global perspective to this team at gDEX along with his inspiring leadership. He is a celebrated market influencer, internationally followed Web3 subject matter expert, and his work over the years in Web3 has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Yahoo Finance etc., including being linked to boosting Japan’s economy with blockchain.
COO – Sonalii A Abrol A leader in digital entertainment and Gametech business ecosystems, Sonalii A Abrol has an enviable track record working with exceptional global teams at renowned AAA games publishers and developers. Her experience at brands like Nintendo Australia where she led the execution of releasing multiple 1st party & 3rd party game titles, to Gameloft Australia, and Ubisoft India make her a strong operations leader at gDEX. An engineer turned marketer, Abrol has near 15 years’ experience in the APAC markets, with tactile expertise across multiple domains such as digital business operations, strategic growth initiatives, digital marketing and analytics, brand management, organizational communications, team building, and motivation.
CTO – Benj Roberts Benj is a seasoned technology leader and CTO with over twenty years’ experience building high performing development and operational technology teams across traditional finance, FinTech, and blockchain-based financial services and startups with leading global Fortune 50-500 corporations like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital, and TD Securities. He inspires a great team of tech professionals at gDEX in building the next generation of gaming tools and experiences. While at JP Morgan, he worked on their Quorum blockchain, for decentralized large-payment interbank settlement (~$26BN across 7,000 transactions), and was the key technology advisor for projects serving the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Australia Stock Exchange (replacement with Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and smart contract structures across core traded asset classes of ~ $3.5BN daily turnover), Hong Kong Monetary Authority (daily transactions totalling ~$5.2BN), and the APAC Fintech Ecosystem. Over the years, he managed the Equity and Equity Derivatives trading platforms across Asia-Pacific (including Japan) building real-time (us & ns) infrastructure and application stacks with 99.999% uptime increasing stability and agility 10-fold through extensive operational, adaptive, and risk management tooling.
CMO – Sesha Kanthamraju A Disney veteran with over 15 years leading marketing and communications for gaming and content across businesses, Sesha joins gDEX to lead the marketing and communications strategy and rollout. He worked across industries including media, advertising agencies to include BBDO India, technology firms like HCL, fintech, financial services and ESG. At Disney, he launched numerous games accross console to mobile and then to online and social including the hugely successful Disney Infinity series, Where’s my water, Club Penguin and built fan communities for Star Wars and Marvel across the region. He co-founded Green Vision, an NGO in India that has worked on environmental awareness and sustainability programs since 1992.
Senior/Lead Software Engineer – Julian Muro Julian is a passionate gamer and developer with over a decade’s experience in this industry. He worked for best-in-class brands and many fan-favorite IPs such as Sega, Pokemon, Konami, Sony, Square Enix, Terminator, Final Fantasy, Assassin’s Creed, and Call of Duty. At gDEX, he is working on creating the world’s most innovative platform for the gaming community. He has been deeply involved in Blockchain development for the past seven years and naturally integrated his passion for video games by combining both worlds. To that end he developed one of the first DeFi based blockchain web games ever made and has helped create many high-level NFT marketplaces that have generated millions in sales.
VP of Digital Technology – Dan Crane As a passionate technologist and digital innovator, Dan has been at the cutting edge of technology for more than 20 years now. From both working in and founding tech startups, to his work at the C-level of large corporations, Dan has the breadth of experience one rarely sees in this space, while still maintaining his thirst for the next big idea. At gDEX, Dan leads the team’s digital thinking and helps connect gen Z with the best-in-world experiences being built here. At Tatts Group ($7Bn MC), an Australian top 50 company, Dan led digital teams as Chief Online Officer as well as CEO of their innovation division, with the responsibility of all online product development, digital innovation, and marketing. He built the team from 20 to 80 strong and grew their annual online turnover to more than $1bn.
Head of Games – Ian Tan Gamer of 15 years and in GameFi and crypto for the past couple of years. Ian successfully built a leading and award-winning SEA esports agency with footprints across more than 20 countries. He leads the mandate to bring in the world’s best games onto the gDEX platform. Ian drove partnerships with a portfolio of leading gaming companies such as Riot Games, Tencent Games, Moonton (owned by Bytedance), Bandai Namco, Blizzard and many more creating high scaling adoption programs and campaigns for user acquisition, partnerships, and community growth. He played an integral role in creating the major Web3 Play to Earn Esports tournament “GalAxie Cup” with Axie Infinity, FTX, AAve Grant, that GuildFi won.
Head of Guilds & Ecosystem – Adrian Sim A Guild Founder & GameFi Advisor to Star Symphony, Lorcan Gaming, Lambda Society. As a previous entrepreneur, Adrian successfully grew his digital localization company to be the go-to service provider for China Literature, Bilibili, Xiaomi, and more. He embraced the Web3 agenda by co-founding two play-to-earn guilds over the years; The Lambda Clan, an offshoot of Lambda Society that has paid out millions to over 600 scholars worldwide, and Lorcan Gaming, a competitive gaming guild that focuses on organizing Web3 esports events. At gDEX, Adrian is the voice of all guilds in constantly challenging the team to build stronger experiences for all. Adrian has organized education programs onboarding Web2 gamers to Web3 and crypto in his guilds and is also a fervent advocate of being a degen.
Head of Partnerships – Cher Chung Cher is a crypto evangelist who comes from traditional M&A in fortune-500 corporations. She leads the strategic partnership opportunities at gDEX working with internal and external stakeholders. She has actively managed investor relations, strategic partnerships, capital investments and business development activities in the blockchain industry since 2017. Cher has dynamic expertise in the digital assets business, specifically in crypto mining, token launches, CEX & DEX listings, venture capital, custodian services and media. She provided token advisory, led investor rounds and is a shareholder in a number of cutting-edge initiatives like NFT, DeFi and Web3 projects.
Head of Marketing – Rohit Kundliwal A crypto marketer since 2017, Rohit formerly held positions across marketing and community with WazirX (acquired by Binance), and was a strategic consultant in Fortune-500 companies. He brings in a unique marketing expertise into gDEX and is mandated to strengthen the community engagement for the platform.
He has experience managing some of the largest crypto ambassador programs and communities, producing crypto content on YouTube, helped launch India’s first crypto merch store by a CEX, and managed some of the biggest influencer marketing programs in crypto.
Product Manager – J.B. Andrew A true gamer at heart, J.B. has over eight years’ experience in the gaming industry, and is incredibly passionate about gaming products, indie gamer development, and is now focusing on the Metaverse & NFTs. He is currently obsessed with making the gDEX Metaverse a platform of many firsts for gamers everywhere. As a Gaming Product Manager and Certified PMP, he started his career working for Japanese publishers, conducting the product development and release management of over 150 Japanese games for Western release including Go! Go! Nippon! and the original Higurashi: When They Cry Series, on various platforms such as Sony Playstation 3, the portable mobile game platform Sony Vita, and Steam.
