Kirupa Pushparaj / Mews
Hospitality technology company Mews has appointed Indian-origin legal expert Kirupa Pushparaj as its chief legal officer on July 23.
With more than two decades of experience spanning legal leadership and engineering across the fintech, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and consumer technology sectors, Pushparaj will lead the company's global legal, compliance and policy functions.
He will report to Mews founder Richard Valtr and will oversee the company's legal strategy as it navigates an increasingly complex global regulatory environment.
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Before joining Mews, Pushparaj served as chief legal officer at fintech unicorn Step, where he led the company's legal, compliance, government affairs, people and strategic partnerships functions before the company was acquired by Beast Industries.
Earlier, he spent more than eight years at Square, now Block, as deputy general counsel, helping steer the company's 2015 initial public offering while supporting several major product launches involving cryptocurrency and emerging technologies.
His previous experience also includes serving as legal counsel at Amazon Lab126, Amazon's consumer electronics research and development division, following six years as a hardware engineer at Intel.
Commenting on the appointment, Valtr said Pushparaj's combination of legal and engineering expertise and his experience building technology companies in highly regulated industries made him the right choice for the leadership role.
“Kirupa is exactly what we were looking for: a business-first legal leader who has spent his career enabling category-defining products in highly regulated environments. He also brings a rare depth of engineering and legal expertise, earning his law degree while working full-time as an engineer at Intel, before going on to spend over two decades as a senior legal leader scaling technology companies in highly regulated spaces,” Valtr said.
Pushparaj said Mews' operations across multiple geographies, payment systems and regulatory frameworks presented the kind of complex legal challenges he was eager to take on. He added that hospitality had always been a part of his life and that he looked forward to supporting the company's continued growth.
“Hospitality has always been part of my life, so joining a company redefining what an operating system for this industry can look like is a genuine opportunity and I'm looking forward to what comes next,” Pushparaj said.
Pushparaj holds a Juris Doctor from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, a master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from PSG College of Technology.
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