Rob Leahy

STRATEGY & OPERATIONS

Hello, I'm Rob

E X P E R I E N C E

Basalt Protocol

Co-Founder, Commercial & Operations

Basalt Protocol

Sep 2025 - Jan 2026

  • Co-founded a lending protocol for tokenised real-world assets on Solana, starting with S&P 500 exposure
  • Built the go-to-market materials: pitch decks, one-pagers and outreach sequences
  • Presented at international events, sourcing 12+ qualified VC and partner meetings
Convertica AI

Co-Founder, Commercial & Operations

Convertica AI

Mar 2025 - Aug 2025

  • Ran the commercial side of a four-person AI content verification startup, meeting VCs and potential partners across Berlin, Paris and Cannes
  • Wrote the go-to-market documentation and ran live product walkthroughs for technical and non-technical audiences
  • Helped secure a NEAR Protocol startup programme partnership. Won a hackathon award at Near Gravity Berlin for AI misinformation detection
Utmost International

Business Implementation Analyst

Utmost International

Dec 2023 - Jun 2025

  • Managed financial reconciliation and HMRC regulatory reporting for UK life insurance bonds
  • Worked with the team to redesign the claims workflow into four specialised stages with clean handoffs, lifting compliance KPIs from 70% to 95%. An Excel tracker gave each stage visibility on its queue
  • Handled sensitive client financial data and liaised directly with financial advisers and internal teams. Ran AML reviews on client cases, screening through Napier AI
ION Group

Process Improvement Analyst

ION Group

Mar 2022 - Feb 2023

  • Replaced a manual email-based license process with a self-service dashboard, cutting turnaround from 3-4 hours to under 20 minutes (~90%)
  • Scoped requirements and coordinated across dev and product to delivery, routing structured requests through Jira
SAP

Operations Engineer

SAP

Sep 2020 - Jan 2022

  • Cloud Platform Integration support for enterprise clients in banking and pharmaceuticals
  • Multi-Bank Connectivity team - TLS certificate integration and banking connectivity
  • Built the internal wiki for the TLS certificate process and ran knowledge transfer sessions for the global teams in Brazil

S K I L L S   &   T O O L S

Skills

  • Operations & Strategy
  • AI & Automation
  • Process Improvement

Tools

  • n8n
  • Notion
  • Claude Code
  • Dune Analytics
  • Excel & Google Sheets

E D U C A T I O N

PAT

PAT Business School

Diploma in Fintech Risk & Compliance

Dublin, IrelandJan 2025 - Jan 2026
ATU

Atlantic Technological University

BSc (Hons) Business Information Systems

Galway, IrelandSep 2016 - Jun 2020

D E M O S

Proof I can do the work

Hands-on builds - 4 projects, pick one to step through.

n8n · supplier compliance and document chasing3 brands, 10 suppliers, 42 checks every morning

Supplier certificates: where does the agent stop?

Food brands have to prove every supplier is safe, and the proof expires: certificates, allergen declarations and insurance, each on its own clock, each chased by hand. I built the register that holds them and the agent that drafts the chasers, then worked out where it has to stop.

Supplier certificate register: the full workflow
The whole thing, left to right: four stages, ending in three outputs.

Loads everything the run needs before it decides anything: three brands, ten suppliers and their 41 documents, the four cut-offs between valid, due, urgent and expired, and the fixed wording of the chaser emails. It also loads a marking sheet, the answers the run should reach, set down before it ever ran so the results are checked rather than just reported.

Supplier certificate register: Set up the register
1 / 5

Built in n8n, a tool for joining steps together without writing an application. No model writes any of the wording, because a model inventing a certificate number is the one failure that would make the whole register untrustworthy. The suppliers, brands, certificates and credit figures are all invented. Nothing is sent: chasers are drafted and logged. Filing a certificate when it comes back is the next build.

Project 1 of 4

P R O J E C T S

Selected builds

The Vault Landscape
Briefing for a UK-regulated tokenisation firmMay 2026

The Vault Landscape

A briefing on tokenised real-world asset vaults for senior leadership. It sizes the market by category, profiles the eight protocols that anchor it, and sets out the ERC-4626 standard and the permissioned versus permissionless access models. It then maps the regulatory position across the UK, UAE, EU and US, ending with where the white space is.

Tokenised RWAERC-4626Regulatory AnalysisMarket Sizing
Download the briefing (PDF)
Ireland Crypto Regulatory Guide for Builders
Superteam Ireland bounty1st place

Ireland Crypto Regulatory Guide for Builders

A 14-page guide to Ireland's digital asset regulation, written from primary sources. Every activity a builder might run is sorted into one of four buckets: CBI authorisation, lawyer first, lawyer recommended, or monitor only. The guide's closing argument: treat compliance not as a cost but as a competitive advantage.

MiCACASP AuthorisationObligation MappingRegulatory Analysis
Download the guide (PDF)
Near Gravity - Misinformation Detection Platform
NEAR Hackathon, BerlinHackathon award for AI/blockchain integration

Near Gravity - Misinformation Detection Platform

An AI platform that detects misinformation using LLM embeddings and semantic analysis, scoring content in real time. Blockchain adds a tamper-proof record of each verification, creating a fact-checking layer nobody can quietly edit.

AI Semantic AnalysisLLM EmbeddingsReal-Time VerificationBlockchain
SafeTi - Rental Market Transparency
ETH Dublin1st place

SafeTi - Rental Market Transparency

An AI platform that brings verifiable, trusted data to rental transactions, cutting the information gap between landlords and tenants. Blockchain provides the verification layer underneath.

AIConfidential ComputeBlockchainEthereum
BNB Shield - Real-Time AML Compliance
ETH OxfordHonourable mention, BNB Chain track

BNB Shield - Real-Time AML Compliance

Real-time AML compliance that automatically flags politically exposed persons (PEPs). Built to take the screening work regulated institutions still do by hand and turn it into an automated, always-on layer, with every check recorded on-chain.

AML / KYCComplianceBlockchainRisk Screening

C O N T A C T

Always happy to chat