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SolidBlock is blessed to have a large number of women on staff and in executive positions. We love to highlight our CEO Yael Tamar, and our newly selected President Laura Brightsen, both bright, engaging women at the top of their field. This article focuses on five women we admire that are making serious progress in educating the public about blockchain and crypto and helping bring them into the mainstream. Get ready to be impressed!
Natalia Karayaneva, Founder & CEO, Propy – Making it easier to buy homes with NFTs
Propy is breaking all boundaries! This year, Propy facilitated the first NFT home sale in Florida. That’s right. The property was sold using blockchain technology as an NFT (non-fungible token) and paid for with cryptocurrency. Propy, a company supported by Silicon Valley leaders and the National Association of Realtors, is revolutionizing the real estate industry by deploying a novel technology.
As a real estate professional for 15 years, Natalia was frustrated with how time-consuming and rife with fraud real estate transactions were. Propy was built with the vision to automate the real estate sales process. The Palo Alto-based company is writing new pages in real estate history by introducing the technology to allow entirely online and self-driving real estate transactions on smart contracts.
Natalia and Yael go way back. In an impromptu and unfiltered podcast that Natalia recorded with SolidBlock’s CEO Yael Tamar last year, Natalia revealed that like many women in business, she’d not only been excluded from meetings but had been asked inappropriate questions about her competency, including a male investor who asked why she wasn’t in PR, as if that was the only acceptable position for a woman.
“We don’t want those uncomfortable moments to happen,” she says. “That’s why we’re here, to make sure our daughters don’t experience that.”
Propy is sponsoring a two-day conference on March 10, in Miami, at which Mayor Francis Suarez will speak about moving from a real estate economy to a crypto economy. Full disclosure, Yael is also an invited speaker. Click here to learn more.
Najah Roberts, Co-Founder, The Black Wall Street, and Crypto Entrepreneur – Helping reduce the wealth gap by educating the black community about crypto, the “New Money”
It is hard to find a more dedicated, enthusiastic, empowered woman than Najah Roberts. A multi-talented and prolific businesswoman, Najah hosts not one but two podcasts, and this past year, she interviewed Yael on “On the Block.”
Najah is Co-Founder with actor and entrepreneur Hill Harper of The Black Wall St., the first Black-owned digital wallet and cryptocurrency exchange platform in the US, and it deserves our recognition as a leading proponent of empowering historically, systemically institutionalized, and marginalized communities.
As a young financial advisor, Najah became frustrated with her limited ability to help Black Americans. “I quickly realized that even though the financial tools we were presenting were beneficial, the wealth gap was so big and so wide that something short of a miracle would have to happen to get families of color where they needed to be [economically] with these tools alone,” she writes.
Enter cryptocurrency.
“I finally got into crypto, which I call ‘New Money,’ and left behind ‘Old Money’ at the end of 2017,” she explains. “After six years of being an educator in this space, I am still convinced that cryptocurrency will be the way to close the wealth gaps that exist in our communities.”
Najah has made a commitment and a personal goal to change the world through crypto education, “block by block, city by city, state by state and country by country, and my journey is just beginning.”
Dr. Jane Thomason, Social Entrepreneur, Social Impact Thought Leader, Blockchain Proponent – Creating social change with blockchain
Hailing from Brisbane, Australia, Jane’s encounter with blockchain came late in her career.
“I was a total novice with zero knowledge of either blockchain or cryptocurrencies,” she writes. “In fact, I was not very interested in all of the latest technological advancements. My surprising journey since then, however, has catapulted me into being a world leader in the field of blockchain in a way that I had never dreamed or planned.”
A successful entrepreneur, having founded and built a $250 million revenue consulting company, Jane, nevertheless, took a leap. “Since making the decision to shut my eyes and leap into this blockchain and technology world, I have experienced the most colorful, fun, inspiring, and impactful years in my career,” she says.
Jane sees blockchain as a tool for social change. Recognized in Forbes Magazine (2018) as a leader in Blockchain for Social Impact, Jane authored the book, Blockchain Technologies for Global Social Change. She has consulted multiple international organizations on digital transformation, sustainability, and ESG, including the Commonwealth Secretariat on the preparation of a Fintech Toolkit for Central Banks, and prepared and presented a Technical Paper on Blockchain and Sovereign Bonds for the Commonwealth Ministers of Finance meeting in 2019.
“For the first time in human history, we have the technological tools that will enable us to connect the bottom billion unbanked to the global economy, to provide digital identity to stateless people… to direct benefits to women and girls,” she explains.
This is the “Decade of Women,” touts Jane. “We must harness these digital tools and our collective ambition to create a connected and distributed token economy to transform lives of women and girls across the globe and achieve Quantum Impact.”
Heidi Chakos, Owner of learningcrypto.com, and Crypto Tips YouTube Personality – Getting uncomfortable and teaching about crypto, the new wealth transfer
Heidi Chakos is a free spirit and an unapologetic bitcoin enthusiast. Having renounced her US citizenship in 2019 so that she could roam the world unencumbered and achieve a higher level of privacy and autonomy, Heidi has decided to pursue her best life.
Heidi is a vlogger well known for her cryptocurrencies-focused YouTube channel, Crypto Tips, in which she covers emerging bitcoin and altcoin trends, possible scams, and the global economy. Her straightforward no-nonsense style is captivating. She became famous for a blog, heiditravels, posted on Steemit, in which one of her single posts, Let’s Get Uncomfortable, received a record award of 12,000 Steem Dollars.
“Comfort isn’t exhilarating,” she wrote in 2014. “It isn’t life-changing. Comfort won’t leave you feeling accomplished or proud. So let’s get uncomfortable.”
Staying with a family in Tahiti, Heidi found depth in her experience of sharing simple pleasures with her hosts. “It doesn’t happen to everyone, and not every trip will inspire a deep sense of fulfillment. But if you’re lucky, traveling somewhere new will change your perspective of the lives of others, and you’ll hopefully better appreciate the blessings in your own life.”
Being a person of no country goes hand-in-hand with the idea that blockchain and cryptocurrency can cross borders, democratize investments, and provide you with financial connectivity wherever you are. Heidi’s website, Learning Crypto, of which her videos and blogs are a part, was created as a learning platform to educate individuals on “how to make calculated, educated decisions when it comes to researching, purchasing and storing your cryptocurrency investments.”
“Our passion is to educate and empower those who are ready to take part in this new wave of wealth transfer,” the website states. Happy trails, Heidi!
Rachel Wolfson, Senior Reporter, Cointelegraph, Blockchain Analyst, and host of The Crypto Chick podcast – Making crypto accessible and easy to understand for all
When she was interviewed on the BlockSolid podcast last year, Rachel Wolfson had just published her new book, with a foreword by legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper, Bitcoin: Down The Rabbit Hole: A 3-part beginner’s guide for buying, selling and “hodling” bitcoin on crypto exchanges (and PayPal!).
An avid follower of cryptocurrencies since their conception, Rachel is an entrepreneur and journalist who has helped promote many facets and intricacies of this evolving digital economy, especially as it pertains to women’s participation.
“Women are great at taking something technical and making it easy to understand. There is a need for women in this space,” explained Rachel. “When I started writing about blockchain and cryptocurrency,” it was a man’s domain. The increase in women inhabiting the crypto space is “very apparent,” she proudly noted.
Rachel was recently named by Next Web as one of the top five women working to change the world of crypto and was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine as an influential woman in the blockchain. A writer for HuffPost, her articles range anywhere from discussing tokenizing traditional assets to highlighting cryptocurrency experiments. She recently started writing for Bitcoin Magazine, as well.
When she’s not writing about crypto, Rachel spends her time as a marketing consultant with a heavy focus on blockchain and crypto-based startups. She specializes in bringing a human element to tech, something that is definitely needed in the emerging field of digital currency.
We’re looking forward to future interactions with Rachel as SolidBlock expands its scope to include a new project called The SolidBlock Ecosystem.
