Our Team

Dirk has worked with information security, privacy, and cryptography for a couple of decades so it was just natural that he would wind up in the world of crypto currencies and blockchains. Previously President and COO at SALT Blockchain, Dirk is currently Founder & Chief Strategist at Imagine Crypto, LLC Before SALT he spent a decade or so helping to build Coalfire, now the largest global dedicated cybersecurity consultancy where he held positions as the VP of Enterprise Risk & Compliance, VP of Threat Intelligence, and Regional VP of Professional Services for the Central US. Prior to all that he was a founder and Principle Analyst at Leviathan Security, served as the Chief Security Architect for ConQwest (now Towerwall), and as the Senior Manager of Global Security Architecture at Global Crossing, Ltd. His experience extends through a variety of industry verticals including retail, banking, telecommunications, investment, energy, higher education, government organizations, and third-party service providers such as hosting and cloud services. Dirk also teaches and speaks globally on the topics he’s passionate about contributing to the Certified Bitcoin Professional (CBP) training course on Udemy and Thinkific, teaching multiple session at the Blockchain Training Conference, and the Rocky Mountain Internet Security Conference, as well as sitting on panels at events including the London Blockchain Summit and Belgrade Venture Forum. He is also a contributing author to publications from the original SANS Incident Handling Step-by-Step guide to Security 2020: Reduce Security Risks This Decade. At C4 he serves on both the CBP and CCSSA committees.

Fara is a compliance professional with over a decade of experience across financial services and the cryptocurrency sector. With a background in banking and regulatory compliance, Fara has developed experience in anti-money laundering (AML) and risk assessment, with a growing focus on RegTech tools and blockchain analytics to help detect and manage financial crime risks more effectively. Fara’s work spans traditional financial systems and digital asset environments, with experience supporting compliance programs for crypto exchanges and fintech companies. This includes exploring how regulatory technology and blockchain analytics can improve transaction monitoring and strengthen risk detection. Fara is interested in how data-driven tools can support more adaptive and effective compliance processes.

Rodney is currently the COO & AML Compliance Ninja at Outlier Compliance Group (Outlier) a Canadian-based consulting company that set out to break the consulting mould by focusing on 3 core principles: Value, Open-Source & Continuous Improvement. Rodney is a Certified Bitcoin Professional (CBP) and a Certified Ethereum Professional (CEP), who fell down the rabbit hole in 2013. Since then, he has been somewhat obsessed with how Bitcoin and other technologies are impacting the financial and regulatory landscape. His financial compliance experience includes anti-money laundering (AML), counter terrorist financing (CTF), fraud and Legislative Compliance Management (LCM). Over the past 15+ years, Rodney has held positions in-house, as a consultant, strategic leader and a founder. He became a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) in early 2011, and is a graduate of the Canadian Institute Financial Crime Analysis course at Seneca College. More recently, Rodney has been a member of the following committees, the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium’s (C4’s) Certified Bitcoin Professional Examination Committee, where he assisted in revamping the content and training for the current certification. He is also a member of the Canadian Blockchain Consortium’s Regulatory Committee, and the Canadian Money Services Business Association’s Dealers in Virtual Currency Committee.

Ruslan is an Anti-Money Laundering and compliance professional with a passion for the place where traditional financial crime meets the world of virtual assets. Over the course of his career, he has worked across multiple international regulatory environments, building a reputation for combining solid compliance fundamentals with genuine technical depth in blockchain tracing and cryptocurrency investigations. His work covers a lot of ground — from designing transaction monitoring frameworks and building out rule libraries to standing up FIU infrastructure and training analyst teams from the ground up. He has a particular knack for tailoring AML programs to the unique risk profile of virtual asset service providers, whether that means calibrating alert thresholds, developing typology-based detection logic, or building the kind of documentation that holds up to regulatory scrutiny. Where Ruslan really stands out is on the investigative side. He has hands-on experience tracing funds across various blockchains, including Bitcoin’s UTXO model and Ethereum’s account-based architecture. He is well-versed in identifying various obfuscation techniques and translating what he finds into clear, defensible investigative narratives. Ruslan has also invested heavily in knowledge transfer, developing training programs and reference materials that make complex on-chain concepts accessible to compliance teams at all experience levels. At the end of the day, Ruslan is someone who genuinely enjoys this space — the technical puzzle of following funds on-chain and the compliance challenge of building programs that keep pace with a fast-moving industry.

Shagufta Sayani is a technology and financial services leader with more than 12 years of experience spanning software engineering, enterprise architecture, digital assets, cybersecurity and technology risk. Her work sits at the intersection of emerging technology, financial services and regulation, helping organizations translate complex technologies into practical, scalable and governable capabilities. Shagufta began her career as a software engineer, building banking and financial technology platforms for global institutions including Nomura, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank. Her experience across retail, wholesale and investment banking established a strong foundation in enterprise technology, distributed systems and the complexities of modern financial infrastructure. During her time at JPMorgan Chase, she gained early experience in permissioned blockchain technology and its potential applications within enterprise environments. In 2018, Shagufta became EY Canada’s first blockchain hire and spent the following years helping build the firm’s blockchain and digital assets capability from the ground up. Her work spanned technical architecture, solution design and delivery, hiring, business development and go-to-market. She led and contributed to global engagements supporting organizations including the World Bank Group, IMF, IFAD, Microsoft, Merck and Canadian Blood Services, helping explore and implement blockchain solutions across financial services, public sector and other highly regulated industries. More recently, Shagufta expanded her experience into cybersecurity, technology risk and regulatory transformation. She has advised financial institutions and other complex organizations on technology risk, governance, operational resilience and regulatory remediation, including OSFI-driven assessments and B-13-related work. Today, Shagufta focuses on the evolving digital assets landscape within financial services, particularly where emerging technologies intersect with payments, enterprise architecture, risk and regulation. She is interested in how financial institutions can move beyond experimentation and toward scalable, production-ready capabilities across areas such as tokenized money, stablecoins, digital asset infrastructure and next-generation payments. With a career spanning hands-on engineering, emerging technology, consulting and regulatory work, Shagufta brings an end-to-end perspective on what it takes to move technology from concept to real-world adoption within complex and highly regulated environments.