Women in Blockchain: Impacting the Future meetup, hosted by Blockchain Space and in cooperation with Consensys and Emfarsis consulting, was held on the 23rd of October 2019. Thessy Mehrain, the speaker for the event provided an introduction to the values, mission and motivation for Women in Blockchain. Here she talked to the attendees about WiB NYC and other known communities around the world and also discussed about special project held by WiB such as "The One World Award" and "Blockchain at the Edge Workshop" which was held at Devcon5 in Osaka, Japan a few weeks prior to this event.
Tina Biona-Gallano of Consensys, founder of BlockJuan and PinayInDevcon here in the Philippines, led the event as the first speaker and introduced and invited every filipino to join with the tagline"Tara Pilipinas Aral Tayo Blockchain" (Let's learn about Blockchain, Philippines!) with people from different communities in the blockchain in the hopes of enlightening the Filipinos with blockchain. After a brief introduction she set the stage for Nathan Smale and the other speakers. Nathan is an Australian who moved here to the Philippines 14 months ago to help their development team here and decided to stay for the community.
For the benefit of the audience, Emfarsis Director Leah Callon-Butler asked Miguel Cuneta, co-founder of Satoshi Citadel, the longest running Philippine Bitcoin startup, to explain briefly what blockchain is. She also presented a video explaining what blockchain is and what it does. After the presentation she gave the microphone to Thessy Mahrain, the keynote speaker, Thessy's commitment is to increasing social and economic inclusion through blockchain solutions. She is the Co-Founder of Liquality at Consensys, a project to enable unintermediated value exchange for financial inclusion, and frictionless global interactions across different blockchains.
In 2016 Thessy founded 'Women in Blockchain', a decentralized global community that is governed only by common principles to be a catalyst for women defining the blockchain space. She also worked on self-sovereign identity and a supply chain solution and with the Consensys Social Impact team.Previously, Thessy was Vice President of Product Strategy at JPMorgan's investment bank, worked with Occupy's Alternative Banking Group, was a partner in a consultancy for digital solutions and transformation, and co-founded a scientific peer reviews system.
Mehrain talked about different opportunities and possibilities with blockchain and the WiB projects, sharing with the attendees her vision and goals with WiB, decentralization and possibilities and uses of blockchain technology.
The audience did a quick session breaking up into smaller focus groups and shared insights and learnings from the session, and then afterwards sharing their ideas to the rest of the audience. Community events like this are great for education and building a good network for spreading knowledge and skills to the next wave of blockchain and cryptocurrency users and enthusiasts.
About BlockchainSpace
BlockchainSpace is a blockchain dedicated community platform hosting meetups, hackathons and specialized industry forums with an anchor location in the heart of the Manila's central business district.
Special thanks to the food and drink sponsors for this event, Emfarsis Consulting and Consensys. Your continued support of our community events is much appreciated!
