Bren Maciel leads institutional business development at Upshift and August Digital, connecting institutional capital with DeFi yield opportunities through non-custodial vault infrastructure. Since entering crypto in 2021, Bren has watched the industry develop from the early DeFi summer days to now specializing in vaults, lending, and institutional onchain asset management—previously serving on the institutional sales team as an early employee at The Tie. At August and Upshift, she manages relationships with institutional LPs, onboards vault curators, manages the DeFi loan book, and helps deploy strategies across CeFi and DeFi—contributing to the platform’s growth to $550M+ in TVL.