Storj Labs Appoints Katherine Johnson as Vice President of Compliance and Human Resources, General Counsel

Storj Labs today announced that Katherine Johnson has joined the company as its Vice President of Compliance and Human Resources. Katherine will oversee both departments, as well as serving as General Counsel, managing the company’s day-to-day legal efforts. Johnson’s long tenure of working in compliance, including her time at digital currency platform Coinbase, will be critical for Storj Labs as it launches the first enterprise-ready decentralized cloud storage platform later this year and navigates the evolving regulatory landscape.

Johnson previously joined the Storj Labs advisory board in February of 2019, and will remain as an advisor, where her background and experience can inform board-level decisions.

“We’re thrilled to have Katherine join our team and oversee several important parts of our business. She’s been a huge contributor to the company since joining our advisory board in February, and we look forward to utilizing her skillset as Storj Labs grows its business and the regulatory landscape matures,” said Ben Golub, executive chairman, and interim CEO at Storj Labs. “The world of digital assets is quickly progressing, and Katherine has been at the center of the conversation since nearly its beginning, making her perfectly suited for the role—especially as Storj Labs continues its effort of being a leader in token governance.”

Storj Labs places a high priority on token governance and has taken steps to be transparent with token holders, regulators, and other interested parties. The company publishes a quarterly STORJ Token Balances and Flows Report and shares its policies and procedures related to token lock-ups, treasury, and cryptographic controls. Johnson will now oversee this effort and be responsible for identifying opportunities for the company to further enhance its token governance efforts.

“Since meeting Ben, Shawn, and the rest of the Storj Labs team, I’ve been impressed by the company they’ve built and the amazing work the team has put forth ahead of its beta. I look forward to contributing to that effort ahead of the production launch this fall,” said Johnson. “The crypto asset ecosystem is quickly evolving and there aren’t many companies better prepared for it than Storj Labs.”

At Coinbase, Johnson supported the company’s compliance team during a period of hyper-growth and geographical expansion. She also helped Coinbase launch its People of Color Employee Resource Group (ERG). During her career, Johnson also worked at Ernst and Young, Credit Suisse, BNY Mellon, and several law firms.

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About Storj Labs

Storj Labs provides secure, affordable distributed cloud storage that gives data ownership back to the user, instead of major corporations. The company’s open-source cloud storage platform utilizes spare disk drive space shared by its community members to create a secure network for developers, operations teams, companies, and others in need of secure cloud storage. The distributed architecture of the Storj network protects against attacks, improves reliability, increases download/upload speeds, and enhances performance when compared to many traditional cloud storage approaches.

Storj Labs also created the Tardigrade decentralized cloud service, the world’s first decentralized cloud object storage service. Tardigrade offers decentralized cloud storage that’s automatically encrypted, easily implemented, highly performant, exceptionally economical, and ridiculously resilient.

Currently, in beta, the Tardigrade service delivers durability, performance, and security that is better than major cloud providers, at a fraction of the cost. Through the Tardigrade Open Source Partner Program, any open source projects that enable users to store data on Tardigrade via connectors will receive a portion of the revenue generated by those users.