Faraz Rana is the founder of Blue Ridge 561.

Faraz was part of the founding employee team at Bread, a cutting edge payments and lending company. Bread sold in a successful $500M exit to a financial institution in late 2020.

As part of the six year journey from inception to exit, Faraz advised on strategic product design, negotiated and implemented bank partnerships, helped scale internal operations, and built and managed bank-grade legal, compliance, and information security functions. He also managed the GRC committee of the Board of Directors.

Before helping to start Bread, Faraz sourced and executed partnerships at an early stage activity booking start-up.

Prior to his start-up life, he advised buyers and sellers as a Private Equity/M&A attorney at a large global law firm.

Combined, he has 15 years of experience advising and building.

He graduated from the University of Virginia and Cornell Law School.