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Welcome Balinda Chu, Virginia Varela & Thomas Cohen

It’s a pleasure to welcome Balinda Chu, Virginia Varela, and Thomas Cohen to Klaros.


Balinda Chu

Balinda Chu has joined us as a director focusing on consumer compliance & BSA/AML. Her commitment to innovation and transparency, proactive approach to stakeholder communication, and track record of developing scalable compliance programs have already made her a great asset for clients.


Balinda is a highly accomplished finance executive with over 17 years of leadership experience in risk management and compliance. She excels in developing trust and confidence through the execution of comprehensive compliance assessments, remediation of consent orders, and plain English advisory on BSA/AML regulations. Balinda's career highlights include developing several holistic regulatory programs and systems as lead BSA Officer with Redstone Federal Credit Union, again as an analyst working for a Homeland Security financial investigation unit, and culminating in a regulatory patent with Capital One in 2022. Her strengths lie in project management, process and program development, monitoring and testing, and regulatory affairs, including partner banking, banking as a service, credit unions, banks, FinTechs, and regulatory agencies.

Virginia Varela

Virginia Varela has joined us as a senior advisor. She focuses on community banks, fintech partnerships, post-M&A integration, and regulatory issues. Like many of our senior advisors, she brings experience from both sides of the regulatory aisle.


Virginia has a proven history of turnaround success at distressed banks, resulting in profitable business exits at four different banks. She also has significant experience in remediating federal enforcement actions. Virginia was President and CEO of Golden Pacific Bank, a nationally chartered community bank, for over eight years until it was acquired by SoFi Technologies in 2022, and held CEO, President, and Board positions at three other California community banks. She first entered the industry in the 1980s as a bank examiner and later was a federally commissioned bank examiner in charge of both safety and soundness and compliance exams. Virginia held various senior supervisory roles at the Federal Home Bank of San Francisco, Office of Thrift Supervision/Office of Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She’s served on numerous boards, most recently as a director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.


Balinda and Virginia’s expertise will be extremely valuable as we continue to help banks, fintechs, and infrastructure providers navigate the evolving world of financial services.


Thomas Cohen

Thomas Cohen has joined us as a Principal, focused on helping to build our investment arm, Klaros Capital. With a decade of financial analysis and investment banking experience behind him, Thomas has experience providing analytical support and financial modeling to assist clients with sell-side and buy-side M&A transactions, capital-raising efforts, and strategic alternatives across a wide range of industries, including depository institutions, asset management, manufacturing, industrial equipment, engineered materials, and consumer products. Thomas’s experience includes stints on the Industrial team at R.W. Baird & Co., Inc. and with the Financial Institutions Group at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., as well as covering community banks and credit unions at Performance Trust Capital Partners. Thomas received his undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Economics from Boston University.


As always, if you’d like to chat about innovation, regulation, or related topics, shoot us a note at hello@klaros.com.

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