Robinhood Appoints Norm Ashkenas and Kelly Zigaitis as Chief Compliance Officers

We’re excited to announce Robinhood will welcome two new Chief Compliance Officers to our team! Norm Ashkenas will be joining as Chief Compliance Officer for Robinhood Financial and Kelly Zigaitis will serve as Chief Compliance Officer for Robinhood Securities. 

With extensive, exemplary backgrounds in brokerage industry compliance, Norm and Kelly will lead our compliance teams as we scale our processes, policies, and practices. Regulatory compliance is a critical element of investor protection and Robinhood is committed to ensuring that our compliance program is industry leading. Alongside continued investment in enhancing controls that support a high quality investing experience for our customers, we are also actively growing our customer support team and the resources available to our customers so they can stay informed. 

Norm Ashkenas will join Robinhood in September and was most recently SVP and Head of Compliance for Fidelity Institutional & Fidelity Brokerage Technology, and CCO for National Financial Services and Fidelity Distribution Co., the clearing, custody, intermediary, capital markets, and brokerage technology divisions of Fidelity Investments. He joined Fidelity in 2003 and has held various compliance leadership roles including Head of Compliance for Fidelity Personal Investments, CCO for Fidelity Brokerage Services, and CCO for Fidelity Personal and Workplace Advisors, and Fidelity Personal Trust.  Prior to Fidelity, Norm was SVP for Regulatory and Compliance Examinations with Prudential Securities Inc., and VP/Associate General Counsel for 10 years, and was a litigation attorney with Chemical Bank. Norm has served on several FINRA committees including as Chair of the NAC and is a Board Member and past Chair for the National Society of Compliance Professionals. Norm earned a B.A. from Northwestern University and a J.D. from Fordham Law School.

“I’ve admired and been impressed with Robinhood’s ability to connect, communicate, and engage with its customers and to expand access to the financial markets for new investors,” said Norm Ashkenas, Chief Compliance Officer for Robinhood Financial. “I’m excited to partner with the many teams across Robinhood as we continue to deliver valuable products and impactful resources to customers seeking a better financial future.” 

Kelly will also join Robinhood in September from Wells Fargo Advisors where she served as Head of Oversight and Controls. Kelly was previously at TD Ameritrade where she held a variety of roles including Managing Director, Retail Supervision and Controls, and as CCO at Scottrade leading up to its acquisition by TD Ameritrade. While with Scottrade, she led a multi-year effort to modernize the company’s compliance program, including developing a high performing team, implementing a technology strategy, and redesigning policies and procedures across the firm. Kelly practiced law in St. Louis for several years before joining a local full service advisory firm as their sole in-house legal and compliance attorney. Kelly earned a B.S. degree with a double major in Communication Disorders and Psychology from Southeast Missouri State University and her J.D. from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, where she served as Managing Editor of the Washington University Law Review.  

“I’m thrilled to be joining a team that has already achieved so much by delivering a modern investing experience while maintaining such focus on its customers and its mission,” said Kelly Zigaitis, Chief Compliance Officer for Robinhood Securities. “The passion Robinhood has for helping more people participate in the markets is unmatched and I look forward to working with everyone across the company as we continue to enable greater financial opportunity to all.”

Welcome to Robinhood, Norm and Kelly!

Tweet us — Like us — Join us — Get help — Disclosures

Robinhood Welcomes Christina Lai and Lucas Moskowitz to the Legal Leadership Team

We’re thrilled to announce that Christina Lai and Lucas Moskowitz have joined Robinhood! Both will serve as VPs and Deputy General Counsels and will sit on Robinhood’s Legal leadership team. 

In her new role, Christina will oversee and grow our corporate legal group, as well as legal’s product, commercial, and privacy teams as we continue to scale Robinhood. Working with teams across Robinhood, she will help lead us forward as we continue to design incredible financial products and deliver a seamless customer experience that enables more people to thoughtfully participate in the financial markets. Christina will also serve as Corporate Secretary for Robinhood in which she will support the expansion of our Board of Directors and continue to enhance the company's governance and disclosure policies and practices. 

"I wholeheartedly believe in the power of democratizing finance for all and am honored and inspired to join Robinhood so I can contribute to that mission,” said Christina Lai, VP and Deputy General Counsel at Robinhood. “I am excited to partner with our incredible legal team, and all of the exceptional employees across Robinhood, as we scale through the next phase of growth and continue to find innovative ways to educate and empower our customers to participate in the financial markets."

Lucas will oversee regulatory, litigation, and government affairs. He will be instrumental as we continue to grow our team in Washington, D.C., and engage with policymakers and regulators. Both Christina and Lucas will report directly to Chief Legal Officer Dan Gallager.

“Robinhood’s focus on ensuring more people have both the opportunity and the information they need to participate in the financial markets and take charge of their finances is inspiring,” said Lucas Moskowitz, VP and Deputy General Counsel at Robinhood. “I’m looking forward to working with such dedicated, talented colleagues on the legal team and across the company as we continue to advance our mission and deliver an incredible experience for our customers.” 

Christina brings valuable experience having served in senior corporate counsel roles across top technology companies. At Yahoo, she served as VP & Deputy General Counsel, and most recently Christina was VP, Corporate Legal Affairs, and Corporate Secretary at Applied Materials. She began her career at Latham & Watkins, and holds a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University and J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.

Lucas has an extensive background in financial services law and policy in both the public and private sectors. He has held several roles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including as the agency’s Chief of Staff under Chairman Jay Clayton and as a senior counsel in the Division of Enforcement. He also has served as Chief Investigative Counsel for the Senate Banking Committee and Counsel for the House Financial Services Committee. He was most recently a partner in the Securities Department at WilmerHale, and holds a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University and J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Welcome to Robinhood, Christina and Lucas!

Tweet us — Like us — Join us — Get help — Disclosures

Investing in our Core Product and Customer Experience

Robinhood has closed $200 million in Series G funding

Today, we’re announcing a $200 million Series G funding at an $11.2 billion valuation from D1 Capital Partners. For seven years, the team at Robinhood has been focused on enabling more access to the markets for more people. With this funding, we’ll continue to invest in improving our core product and customer experience. 

We’re inspired by the ways people are using Robinhood to learn more about the markets. The last several months, in particular, have demonstrated that participation in the markets can be powerful for people. We’re also seeing that our customers are using this time to educate and inform themselves.  

Learning about investing

History has shown us that over time, the stock market can be an important wealth creation tool. Equally important to access is education, particularly in volatile market conditions, which is why we offer resources to help people stay informed. 

We’ve seen evidence that people are taking time to learn more about the markets: average unique daily visits to our Learn resources are up more than 250% since January. We’ve published more than 650 articles on Learn, which provides easily-digestible information on the basics of investing, market trends, and financial terms.

Staying informed

Keeping up to date on market news can also help people feel empowered. Robinhood Snacks, our newsletter and podcast delivering free, digestible, and easy to understand financial news, has nearly 2 million monthly active podcast listeners and more than 20 million people subscribe to the weekly newsletter. 

Serving customers

Robinhood has empowered millions of people to invest and participate in the U.S. financial system. To ensure we continue to meet our customers’ needs, we’re hiring hundreds of new registered financial services representatives this year in Southlake, Texas, and Tempe, Arizona. Across all of our locations, we’re adding new team members to help us reduce response times, build more self-service tools, and enhance our informational and educational tools.

We believe investing at its core is a democratic concept — it allows people to take part in the success of a company or sector they believe in. With our latest round of funding, we’ll continue empowering people in their financial lives and enabling a more democratic financial system. 

Update on Sept. 22, 2020: We’re pleased to share that we’ve raised an additional $460 million in subsequent closings to our Series G, bringing our total for the round to $660 million at an $11.7 billion post-money valuation. The new funding comes from new and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, DST Global, Ribbit Capital, 9Yards Capital, and D1 Capital Partners.

Robinhood to Expand Customer Experience Team with Hundreds of New Employees in Southlake, Texas, and Tempe, Arizona

Robinhood is excited to announce that this year we plan to hire hundreds of additional registered financial representatives in Southlake, Texas, and Tempe, Arizona! 

Over the coming months, we’re committed to working hard to provide seamless experiences for customers. With our customers’ interests and needs front and center, we will continue reducing response times, building more self-service tools, and enhancing the information and education we provide to enable more informed investment decisions. Across all our locations we plan to hire hundreds of new team members, including registered financial representatives and support staff, dedicated to meeting the expectations of our customers. 

“Supporting and communicating with our customers -- both those new to investing and those with more experience -- is a critical part of our responsibility to them,” said Alex Mesa, Head of Customer Experience at Robinhood. “We’ve more than doubled our support team since January and we’ll continue to grow our teams to provide timely, helpful responses to our customers. We look forward to expanding in Southlake and Tempe where a wealth of highly skilled and trained registered financial representatives are located.”

“Companies select Southlake for a reason,” said Southlake Mayor Laura Hill. “They want to be part of this amazing community and all it has to offer. We wish Robinhood the best of luck as they expand their business to include Texas.”

“Tempe appreciates the jobs and opportunities that Robinhood is bringing to our community during this time when our nation is facing record unemployment,” said Tempe Mayor Corey Woods. “Robinhood will be a welcome addition to Tempe’s fintech business community and we look forward to their continued growth. Tempe is dedicated to helping our businesses and our residents succeed.”

We believe participation is power and have been encouraged to see more people get started investing over the past several months. We also recognize our responsibility as involvement in the financial markets increases. We take it seriously and are intent on providing a platform where investors can learn, get hands-on experience, and do more with their money. 

The expansion of our customer support teams is being developed in tandem with our continued investment in expanding informational and educational resources to help customers learn more about the markets and investing and make more informed decisions. Through our Help Center, new articles appearing every week on Robinhood Learn, and in-app news resources, we’re focused on providing answers to questions about our products and financial information to educate customers on financial terms, concepts, and timely market trends. 

We’re thrilled to join the Southlake and Tempe communities and look forward to meeting the many talented individuals we know will help us continue to scale and support our customers. For growth-minded individuals interested in the opportunity to have an immediate impact as we continually strive to provide a seamless customer experience, check out our careers hub here. Join us as we democratize finance for all!

Tweet us — Like us — Join us — Get help — Disclosures

A visual identity that better reflects our vision

Since we started Robinhood, we’ve focused on reimagining the future of consumer finance. We helped pioneer industry-wide, commission-free investing and worked to make finance accessible to everyone. Our brand identity is an integral part of that work, and an extension of our mission to drive financial empowerment and education for our customers. Today, we’re announcing an exciting step towards that goal. A bold evolution of our brand — an inspiring and imaginative new visual identity — to complement the interface you love from your Robinhood account.  

We began this visual identity work over a year ago, drawing inspiration from forward thinking leaders at self-driving car makers, world-class animation studios, and urban planners responsible for defining the future of our cities. 

Through this work, we imagined a more equitable world where everyone has the opportunity to build wealth. A world built around Robinhood’s belief that collective participation in finance is a source of power. This world became the fuel for our evolved visual identity. The result is a future-focused brand that balances product experience with creative expression, and encourages our customers to imagine better futures.

Those of you with a keen eye may have already noticed some elements of this evolved brand identity across our platform and services. 

A new illustration style: delightful and future-focused.

Two new typefaces: Capsule Sans, a warm, highly legible sans serif embodying simplicity and precision; and Nib, a unique, welcoming, and whimsical serif full of personality.

A new wordmark: rebalanced, rearranged, and optimized for legibility clarity.

We also made updates to our brand color, accent palette, iconography, layout system, and more.

Our customers are core to every decision we make, and we hope you see that passion, consideration, and care come through in every touchpoint. In addition to our roster of new features and the continued efforts to improve existing ones, we believe this new visual identity will continue to inspire and empower people everywhere. 

If you’re excited by the work of our design team, check out our open roles — we’re hiring!

Tweet us — Like us — Join us — Get help — Disclosures

Commission-free trading of stocks, ETFs and options refers to $0 commissions for Robinhood Financial self-directed individual cash or margin brokerage accounts that trade U.S. listed securities via mobile devices or Web. Keep in mind, other fees such as trading (non-commission) fees, Gold subscription fees, wire transfer fees, and paper statement fees may apply to your brokerage account. Please see Robinhood Financial’s Fee Schedule to learn more.

All investments involve risk and loss of principal is possible.

Robinhood Financial, LLC is a registered broker dealer (member SIPC). Robinhood Securities, LLC provides brokerage clearing services. Robinhood Crypto, LLC provides crypto currency trading. All are subsidiaries of Robinhood Markets, Inc. (‘Robinhood’). 

Christina Smedley Joins Robinhood as Chief Marketing Officer

We’re excited to announce that Christina Smedley will join Robinhood as Chief Marketing Officer!

Christina will create a new marketing family, bringing marketing, content, and communications together, and establishing new teams across functional areas including product marketing and brand strategy.  Together, we will continue to build a customer experience that enables our customers to intelligently approach the financial markets at their own pace, at any level of investment experience.

Christina has an unmatched history in bringing humanity to financial and technology-based brands. She led PayPal into Interbrand's Top 100 Best Global Brands, pioneering social customer care and building their global marketing campaigns.  Most recently, she has brought Novi into the world for Facebook - a digital wallet for the Libra blockchain payment network. Before that she crafted the Messenger communications strategy introducing the products and services to new audiences - from business solutions to payments to new generations with Messenger Kids. She was at Amazon in its formative years and held senior positions at Edelman.

“I downloaded the Robinhood app in 2015 and have valued the company’s focus on customer experience and the impact it has had for those who can now access the financial markets in a very refreshing way.  Robinhood is already well-loved and has enormous potential, and it truly helps people do more with their money and take control of their financial destinies,” said Christina Smedley, Chief Marketing Officer at Robinhood. “With so much changing around us, building a brand enabling this sort of empowerment and connecting with our customers - especially those who can really thrive from it - is beyond exciting.”

As a member of our executive leadership team, Christina will work alongside our Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev, Chief Financial Officer Jason Warnick, Chief Operating Officer Gretchen Howard, Chief Legal Officer Dan Gallagher, and many teams across Robinhood as we strive to democratize finance for all. 

Welcome to Robinhood, Christina!