Humans of Crypto #6 with Bridget Greenwood

hello everyone and welcome to episode six of the humans of crypto podcast i was joined today by the wonderful bridget greenwood founder of the bigger pie a community i personally enjoy she's been supporting the women working in the crypto space but also on a mission to bring in more diversity more women to build the world of tomorrow i hope you enjoyed this episode let's jump in [Music] okay we are here with the one and only bridget greenwood founder of the biga pie thank you so much for joining and being part of the humans of crypto podcast thank you so much for the invitation it's an absolute pleasure to be here where are you tuning in from today what's what's behind you where are you i am tuning in from north norfolk where i have been for the last 22 years but in less than 22 days i'll be in london permanently so we're excited about the move okay so today we might learn a bit more about the uk blockchain ecosystem maybe we'll find out so tell us who are you what do you do what what do you do in crypto so i came into the space in 2017 um because i went down the bitcoin rabbit hole couldn't figure out how to buy it obstacles they don't have to be that big for certain things and i failed to get past them and buying bitcoin was one of them yeah and then a friend said to me hey send me some money download this wallet i'll send you some btc and i went oh wow that was really easy thanks very much um and i said by the way do you want to join my startup and i had been running a company on my own which was working in social media so bc before child i was an independent financial advisor i wasn't able to continue that once i had him we might get into that story part of this chat um but then i did study how to use the computer and and i'm not particularly technical but i am quite good at relationships so back in the day uh over 10 years ago when social media was organic you know we found a way to be able to attract people to you interested in what you have to say putting out great contents and so i set up a company helping financial firms to do that very quickly we've seen that move to what we have today which i think is a destructive form of consumerism uh of the way that algorithms are designed to take our attention goes to the biggest bitter um the damage i think that it's doing i just didn't want to be involved in that space anymore so when i was off the opportunity to one work with the team and two work in technology that i saw had a very positive potential for our future it was a no-brainer to come in um part of my not being able to go back to work as an independent financial advisor was i was on maternity leave and i always say it in quotations because i wasn't paid leave i just took time out after i had my son before i went back to work and the directors of the company said oh yeah we only want people who are riding high business so unless you're writing quarter of a million we're going to take 70 of your earnings um which isn't conducive to someone who had planned to go back to work part-time and because i wasn't sat at the table whilst the decision was being made my um my needs weren't represented i'm sure had i've been there and said we hang on what about people like myself they would have um considered it and and we wouldn't have necessarily had the same outcome but none of those things happened um and there was a few other things that were happening in the industry that i just felt it was going to be too difficult for me to to come back into the space um but i have had a number of times particularly since being a parent where my gender has held me back professionally and economically uh and now my son is old enough and i can spend more time sort of coming back into the into the work world um much more fully i would like to dedicate that by seeing more opportunities for women without being economically disadvantaged so we have huge opportunities pursuing a massive transference of wealth in word 3.0 crypto before this little dip that we've had still past 2.5 trillion um market cap there is just so much opportunity in wealth that we need to have women involved um we do not have enough women in the space at the moment we didn't back in 2017 when i was having a look around and it's not just about making sure women have access to this economic development it's one of the problems that the world is in its troubles right now is because we only have a few people at the design table designing solutions for only a few people and this technology that we have called blockchain has the opportunity for us to reshape and reframe that but if only a few people are building with this technology then we'll only be building solutions for a few again so there are two reasons why i'm very passionate about making sure we have more women in the space so in september 2019 i founded the big of high which is dedicated to just that making sure that we have gender equity in this space wonderful wonderful i i would love to understand how do you with that moment when you just had your son you're on maternity leave you're coming back and that's the news you get like what did you do at that you know how did you feel at that moment um it was 17 years ago so let me see if i can remember i think i just went you know as i say it's not the first time it's happened to me i've had circumstances which are now deemed to be illegal whether or not companies still practice them you know i overheard somebody speaking um the board of directors were talking about getting a new position in in the job that i had previous and uh i could tell from my the side of the conversation that i was overhearing was that my name was put forward and the answer was well she'd have to be in charge of all of the men and they won't respect a woman so that was a no and then they ended up hiring sales director who was male and the entire team that he was reported was reporting to him were female but at no point did they say well hang on a minute it's an all-female team room remote respects him and then he just went around and just trying to have sex with everyone in the office anyway so it was just a nightmare um and so i guess being told that you can't come back to work unless you're prepared to sort of do it at a full-time basis i was just like okay i'll find something else yeah do you do you think that was unique to the sector that you were in or the industry that you were in so the story that i told you about previous role that i was in was a very different structure i retrained to become a financial advisor it was definitely an issue for the sector i was in as a financial advisor i was the only female advisor in the firm so we had people in a similar age range to me so a lot of people were just about to have a family or had a family um you know all at that younger stage when it's it does take more they're not at school and teenagers and and confront themselves a lot more but none of them had the responsibility of making sure that they were providing child care so none of them consider that as a role for an ifa that's my understanding do you think that the workspace for women today is better than 17 years ago i can't answer that because i have been doing my own thing for the last however long um so i i've never worked in corporate i don't know what that looks like what i am excited about though is in this space in our space we have seen a huge boom particularly in the d5 summer where the sector is growing so quickly that they can't find enough talent enough people with the skills to do it and they're also doing it during a pandemic which is still ongoing i know that there are different restrictions for different countries in terms of movement but it's meant that this industry has had to grow borderless you know it's it's part of you know what we're able to do here um but it's grown borderless which means we have remote flexible working that is breaks into everyone not just a few and i think that's an exciting opportunity if we can allow women women in tech leave the sector after 10 years at twice the rate of their male colleagues do and the biggest reason is the lack of flexibility for their working conditions so imagine how much talent is sat at home because they can't find working opportunities that allow them to possibly and probably do a full-time job but just with the flexibility of the hours that they need and we've got this massive lack of talent uh particularly for our software engineers and i want to marry those too so that we can solve the problem uh for the shortfall of engineers and also make sure that we're bringing more women into the space so i guess two things have probably boosted women into space one lack of talent therefore we need to hire whoever is out there who knows a little bit about crypto who is talented yeah yeah who's talented and and still has the skills to to perform but maybe outside of the usual talent pool and covet basically introducing new ways of working more flexibility from home etc more remote working and just tapping into that borderless ecosystem yes i think we have two opportunities there that we need to make sure that we can take advantage of i feel like it echoes back to you know the the the divide that we see maybe in just in stem in general and women may be less going towards uh technical studies and therefore there's less maybe women that are developers or software developers like do you is it just inerrant that women are going to be in position and that's just how i see it as well is that more women are going to be in positions of pr communications hr marketing and on the tech side i think the issue is we have a pipe we don't have a pipeline problem we have a role model problem so when computers were first invented they were calculated in woman hours because the computations that computers took over were the computations that women were doing then when we needed to start coding these computers again it was done by women because that seemed to be the natural progression however once it became an another thing is great because women hours are paid a lot less than male hours so you know nice and efficient and all perfectly legal back in the day then it became apparent that coding actually was a important job and i believe in the uk the government spent a fortune on bringing men into tech because there was a lack of men in tech it was dominated by women really i'm sorry that i feel like that's a part of history that i do not know well this is all i'm discovering i'm like why are we in the situation we're in now and and this is the story right so then they brought a whole bunch of men in they got the women to train the men up so that they could take their jobs and go into senior management roles because women weren't allowed to do that um and now we have a problem that we don't have enough women in tech well i'm kind of not surprised the other thing is in one generation when we had the pc the personal computer came in then there's a a lot of research to suggest that actually what happened was computers were bought for boys their fathers would sit down with them and help them with gaming or coding my dad did that with us my dad did that well he only had daughters so i can't tell whether he would have done it with us if we if we were his daughters and he had a son to choose from we had a zx spectrum i remember doing basic coding i remember having to type in um yeah i was about seven or eight if i had carried on that journey i would have definitely been encoding because i did math physics chemistry english at school i just didn't know that this was a career path that i could have followed and once we got into machine machine coding so the machine coding then was just a whole number of a whole range of numbers and there would be magazines with pages and pages and pages of these numbers so my dad obviously would take his his challenge just child labor and say right sit down and do three pages and then you take your sister and take a turn and then very quickly after that because i don't think that many people across um across the world had that many children that they could get to type in the machine coding it would come in a tape so then you would put the tape into the tape recorder and play it and it would talk to your computer so then i wasn't really coding anymore i i it's i don't know i don't know it's like i love it i love it i i love love love this conversation because i realize i have no idea what we're talking about right now i don't know i'm not familiar with what you're talking about the pages of code that you input and then goes onto a cassette goes into machine we're missing i'm missing that and i feel like i should know but i don't it's what was it so your dad would make you basically input numbers and so basically is that what you're talking about like this code yeah yeah so that we're considered like you know not interesting yeah so when that was that was just because he was subscribed to computer magazines and if you wanted to download a program then you would program it yourself this was now in machine coding so it was just a string of numbers so i didn't learn anything from that i had no idea what those numbers were or how they represented basic coding i could understand so you know the go-to commands and print and run that made sense to me i could learn that but just a series of numbers didn't mean anything to me and so my coding education sort of ended there but i think i'd have been good at it um is it do you think you're it's interesting maybe you're mentioning the the role figure of the father you know buying the computer teaching his children how to okay i'm gonna put quotes here for coding but it isn't that is for all children out there that are considering you know this this world of software development if at all to just be introduced to computers by your parents is that first very important step that it is that in the house already that you had a computer like yeah so it is but what's happened is that um when there was more coding around because now especially on web 2.0 we have most of the ux and the design right you could be introduced to i think women are introducing things like instagram and and becoming influencers and having opportunity to use the tech in a different way as opposed to create the tech and build the tech they're using it but they're using it the way it's being introduced into their home but before that we had a generation of of sons who were introduced and encouraged into tech so we didn't have any role models for women women had been actively removed from coding um right from the very beginning and now we just don't have role models and if we women are coming into tech because they're leaving tech after 10 years at twice the rate we have a retention and role model issue if we solve the retention and role model issue we'll have a huge pipeline do you have any role models at this point that you can point at and be like this is someone that all women out there and young girls should look at because her career or her work dedication or what she's doing is something to look up to well this is embarrassing i can't list you a bunch of women in tech i mean we've got the bumble ipo we've got the canberra ipo and that is great um to see women you know ceos and and doing ipos and becoming um unicorns and and billionaires and that's great i mean just more of those would be wonderful and then we can see because bundle effectively is a tech company right it's a dating app but it's based on tech um so more of this please that's what i'd like to see loads of the stuff around tech is all based on ada lovelace double a story love list based on ada lovelace but he's a restaurant she's a historical figure can we have more you know current figures that are you know names like zuckerberg and bezos and gates and jobs but i it's interesting and and here i'm just gonna be i think uh this i'm picking up from a jordan peterson podcast but those positions i know you know quote-unquote ceos that everybody's looking up to these multi-billionaire that we're supposed to put on pedestals and that our society is glorifying at this moment are not really positions that i would envy at all at all if these are i mean maybe our society is glorifying you know maybe we're wrong in how we're glorifying certain individuals but there is something to be said about having a quality of life and i'm not sure those guys have that no i mean i mean sidetracking slightly i want to have more role models do i want to have more bases absolutely not um i just want to ask to have role models and and this is a wonderful thing about when women come into into into business and it's not just women when you have diversity of sort right so if you only hire people who've been through the same four schools in the us it doesn't matter that much about their cultural identity because they've been through exactly the same educational program they've got this you know they've been through the same schools they've been taught the same way is that really how diverse is your is your thoughts how diverse are your experiences if they just do that it's a bit more than you know looking just on the on the on the outside of of people's experiences but when women come in the research shows that you do have a better diversity of sort so you're able to see problems where if you don't have that experience you don't see and we've seen plenty of examples that makes sense and if you're like building a proper business you do want multiple inputs you just you know battle test uh what you're offering and what services you're offering i to go back to the education point i think you're right it's it's the whole actually the the men that we were just mentioning right now that are role models whatever that means um none of them have actually finished school so there's something to be said about people okay men in this situation but also women should be encouraged to drop out of school and not go through the usual usual curriculum break out dare and be disagreeable is would would that be because i feel and for being a woman and and have a garage that your parents will support unless you build a business i mean it's not just you need a lot of things yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly i was taught to be so agreeable like i went through the whole schooling system i did all you know i crossed all the all the teas and that didn't do anything for me in crypto you know what i mean yeah so so you're touching on a number of issues here about how society conditions the certain genders yeah to perform in certain roles and then a and and then you know if you're if you have intersectionality on that so women please be agreeable women please don't raise your voice too much be nice if you're a black you're shut down even faster i can't tell you um the research that i've been doing on it i live in north norfolk there is no diversity here at all so i'm so looking forward to actually living somewhere where there is cultural diversity on every level um and but but the research i'm doing about you know because as much as i'm understanding about this technology and and what's going on which is impossible to keep up with because it's just moving so quickly i'm also having to educate myself as to what will work and what doesn't work and why hasn't it works um you know and why are we in the situation you're in and and if i'm representing gender equity that can't just be white women right there has to be gender equity across the broad spectrum of half the population um and yeah so if you're you know if you are neurodiverse if your your gender identity isn't the tick box systems very much you know there are so many ways that you're being conditioned not to be who you are to be quiet not to not to share your thoughts um and it's hugely damaging it's damaging for people emotionally personally and in terms of creativity and understanding you know what what we can bring to the world what solutions we can bring out there so i think it's interesting but i feel like this um to go back to the idea that covet has given us more flexibility and maybe this is wishful thinking but i feel like it also opened up into people's homes there's also that's another thing that i've noticed is that you see what's happening in the background family members you know pets uh home decoration and and it's making even though we're not in the office anymore it's making also people more human in a way bringing more of that flexibility do you think more emotion as well is happening are people being more i think i think the idea that you can be it's more difficult to hide yourself and put on your work persona right i don't think anyone who had to go into the office wearing a suit all the time even if they were wearing a suit we knew that it was only on the top half right everyone knew that they were choosing not to do that on the bottom half if they did have to put on a suit for zoom cool the idea i mean what was great in terms of um parenting and and and care for that unpaid care work that is normally fallen on the shoulders of of women is that whilst that might still be the case i think a lot of the men the law of the dads got to see actually how much work is done rather than it being behind closed coastals when they're off to work so a greater appreciation and therefore maybe a greater opportunity for them to say actually i've got some of this um it's you know especially when when the schools are shut and people trying to work um so there's lots of the good things around it but you know one of the things that we were saying just before this is we're not actually getting to see each other we haven't got the opportunity to hug and to have that experience of energy that we swap which is a different in person than it is uh online but intuitive that um you know those moments that you can have with people where you you kind of just oh i've got you and you can see how people act in an environment much more easily and who's going to speak up more so i think there's a lot that that was positive um and i love the fact that we now have a much greater acceptance and understanding that we don't have to be in person for every meeting it doesn't make sense but we should have a a a blend where we get the best of both worlds yeah i miss hugging i must admit uh i sadly we went back into mini log down here and i couldn't host my my events and it's you know lavinia was in amsterdam and we couldn't i couldn't host crypto drinks and i was really looking forward to showing her that side of crypto here and yes and the people and it's just it's just not the same like on we can meet up online but it's just it doesn't beat hugging and like you said being in the same room and seeing or seeing each other and and touching each other but yeah and hugs are important you know they're important for our immune system which is hilarious that we're not allowed to do them we need to have a strong immune system but that is the world that we currently are in it's crazy but i i'm curious now i'm just thinking about uh your son actually i'm thinking about him thinking you as his mother being aware of all of these things have you showed him how to code do you have this how is it in the house do you guys game together is this i don't know like uh well what's his vision of all of this and about you he's he's i mean he is not with the greatest of respect he he is not the part of the population that we have a problem with he is a straight white cis male who goes to a private school um he's like a great kid he enjoys no no what i'm saying is we don't have to worry about him the world's already built for him he's fine he's going to be fine he means he might have to adapt to the world changing to be open to a few more people but hopefully me being his mum has given him that emotional intelligence and breadth of thought to be able to do that um but yeah no he's doing computer science he wants to he wants to be a mechanic of some sort um loves formula one plays rugby i mean he couldn't be more general difficult if he tried um and yeah i blame that on his dad [Laughter] and that that's meant with all good human rights no no i'm just you know for me it's always interesting to to hear about how we bring up and i don't have children yet but to wonder of what is the education of tomorrow or is there an indication of tomorrow do we need to change how we teach what is important to learn 100 we 100 need to change how we teach when you look at what education was and i am no educational expert at all but education at the time was was created a hundred years ago for a for a certain outcome um having been through the educational system i still valuably think oh education is there to educate our children it's not it's for them to pass exams yeah um which is not education at all um plus passing exams for what for jobs that they don't even we haven't even imagined the jobs that they're going to be doing in 10 years time right um the fact that you think you can go through school and through university and be qualified for a job that's going to last more than i don't know only a few years before it's going to get disrupted and changed so we need to be on a continual learning path we need to be able to understand the the different ways that people can learn it's not just sitting in the classroom um some people like to just study meticulously on their own other people like to learn through you know communication and activities my son cannot stand learning anything by wrote not at all has no interest in that whatsoever finds the most boring thing in the world and also therefore doesn't try you know i'm not saying he doesn't try hasn't got a natural gift to it either so he finds that desperately desperately dull but if you ask him to solve a problem he's all over it he loves it either you know a problem in math or a problem in coding challenge or a problem in assembling something you know he's absolutely flying he he could do that all day every day so we just need to understand what are the different ways that different people enjoy and learn and learning isn't isn't um learning should be experiential like it shouldn't be theoretical i don't know how much crypto stuff i've read about it's all theoretical i've got no way to make it tangible experiential and i have to learn it four five six seven times because i keep forgetting what it is but whenever i can get involved in something and see it working and how i'll handle it and be visceral and understand what happens when you do lose your private keys and you know all those other things then then it's like oh i do really understand that one now okay got it no it's it's i totally agree and the whole experimental thing about crypto is you lose you learn and you lose again and you start over again it's not it's not a straight path it's not a straight path at all and i mean you've seen how i do my classes with the the workshop and i know that it's a lot for for first taste to crypto but i feel like you got to start somewhere because you can read about crypto and look at videos about crypto for months and still not touch crypto you know what i mean and and i know that some people are always a bit like oh my god but like you know what's up they have no clue and i'm already like give me your public address drop it in the zoom here's a wallet here's your private keys and they'll be like well that's what you need it really is i mean i haven't do that for me i'll project send me some money now don't leave this and do that yeah okay now send me some to make sure that you understand how to send it and i was like okay good good and i still get very nervous because i'm like can i should i test a little bit first rather than send it all and it'd be wrong yes because if it's honest and the fees are so much like oh my god i did that yesterday i had some usdt and some usdc not talking about large amounts but yeah you know not amounts that i would be okay to lose and it was sixty dollars in fees because it's a minimum of twenty dollars every time you send it a little bit okay well that was expensive i can't like that really bugs me about a theorem right now is that they have they've ticked all the other boxes they have the good tech they're decentralized it's you know we've built a whole industry on top of that blockchain and it's currently not really easy to use and yes of course layer twos and stuff but like it's still i mean it's not okay that you're paying 60 bucks to transact that's not money right yeah and that was just a transfer i didn't actually manage to do the transaction um i was trying to get into an idea which had been oversubscribed by the time i'd figured it all out so 60 dollars for nothing thanks very much [Laughter] how do you how do you invest maybe i i feel like that's something we don't always talk about as well in crypto like what is what is your profile what do you like to invest in do you invest a lot are you a trader like what's what's your profile definitely definitely not a trader absolutely not um fastest way for me to lose money i mean just just transferring from ud usdt to another wallet i could lose money so if i'm trying to trade i mean so i used to as i said i used to be an independent financial advisor before all of the research shows that actually the more active you are in your trading the less likely you are to um to do as well because it's impossible to predict when the lowest point is when the highest point is yeah um and the more times that you're out of the market the more times you're going to miss those opportunities um and lots of research again says how women are better traders because they have less activity in their trading they're they there's this thing between competence and confidence okay yeah um and this is by the way by the way one i love my son greatly and i was talking about him in terms of demographics and who the system's open to and who it's not two i also adore men right this is not about um suggesting that one sex is better than the other this is about having the data that shows why we should have a system that allows both genders or all genders should i say the same access to opportunities and because we have different strengths we we've all been through the same conditioning um on a macro level right where we see you know we're we're exposed to similar media we we see that there's very much a well uh half the world is owned by 12 men right that's that's a true experience for everyone um and i know that's a whole whole conversation in in of itself but there is this thing that talks about competence versus confidence and very early on by about six years old girls have been conditioned by society to not have the confidence to match their competence and boys can go off and have confidence that doesn't match their confidence but their confidence is superior to their competence and for girls their confidence is inferior to their competence and that has further implications on the world but that goes back to the whole thing of being conditioned to don't make waves be nice you know it's it's less about your competence and speaking up and more about how you conform i feel like i have to share the most random anecdote right now when this is so interesting this competence confidence moment which i mean we all experience all the time men that should not say things and they do because they have confidence but no confidence one moment i was part of something called impact uh in geneva it was a a three-day kind of booth camp empowering youth you know you're a challenge make everybody's a change maker like that type of like was really fun and really interesting and i learned a lot through through those experiences and at some point i don't know if you're familiar with uh the marshmallow challenge it's one of those like yeah when you ask a two-year-old that's the eating one no that's it's no so it also uses a marshmallow but it hasn't it's not about eating it and you know if you don't wasting right okay it's a different one it's about building a structure you get i think one meter of like string and then spaghetti's scotch tape and a marshmallow and you're like 20 minutes as a team to build a structure with those things and the highest structure of the this imagine like 50 participant you split them into you know 10 groups or something and everybody's now working on the sort of a pyramid made of scotch tape spaghetti it's it's insane like it's really fun and it's a great obviously leadership exercise this guy in my group is like i know the experience i've seen it online or something so puts himself in a status of credibility i know how we're gonna do this he starts tying these spaghettis with scotch tape and everything and i'm like this is not gonna work like what he's doing right now it's gonna fall this marshmallow's never gonna stand on this thingy he's it's insane he's building like these this sort of pyramid with like spaghettis that are like a meter and a a meter 50 high it's all wiggly and bad but it took me so long to speak up like i knew from the get-go this was a bad idea i could see that structurally and you don't need to be an architect to feel that something's not going to be structurally sound but he was going with it and he had so much confidence that this was going to work and i was the more the more the time went by i was like oh my god oh my god oh my god i need to speak up i'm not and i couldn't speak up i knew i wasn't going to and only like i think three minutes before the end of the challenge i'm like no and i break off the top like i break because this thing is not holding and i break it off it's barely standing but i like cut it in half basically of its height the guy did not stop lying and actually what happened is that he did not know he had not seen a video but he had put himself in this i don't know why suddenly he thought this is the moment i'm going to shine i'm going to do this and ran with it with so much confidence and i couldn't believe it for me that was an eye opener speak up early don't you know better this guy doesn't know and there's some moments like that that when it happens and it's it it does always blow my mind when it happens but there's a lot of that in crypto that's a lot a lot of confidence running around um and a lot of men that you know that i'm saying that i have the best idea the best project the best token economics you need to do all this and this and this and i feel like more and more i'm learning still today to speak up and cut those spaghettis earlier there's no there's no way that marshmallow is reaching that level i love that happening we're gonna have to use that cut the spaghetti let the marshmallow reach this level and guess what that guy didn't show up the next day that marshmallow guy i think he was embarrassed i think he realized what he did was wrong it's so such a simple moment right there was no consequences there was no people losing money and getting scammed but he realized he did something bad so yeah that's it's interesting i don't know i feel as women we're just taught to be so agreeable and kind and sweet and not well here's the thing i mean it's not and this is this is why i feel strongly about sharing this is i really think i really believe that we are conditioned we are not born this way there's not a gender difference because of the way that we're made up it's a gender difference for the way that we are treated in the world what we see how we see it um all the way through our parents our teachers and it's it's unconscious bias which means that you know people aren't doing it on purpose to you know definitely thinking right that that's that's that's a girl that's a black girl i definitely need to keep her quiet it's instinctual we just seem to be you know learnt from society this is what we do so we need to have design practices in place to change our behavior and we can't ask people to to behave differently because when it's on an unconscious level you can maybe look back and reflect on things but that's that's a design principle take some time and look back on your day-to-day where are the times that you feel that on reflection you perhaps fell into an unconscious bias it wasn't positive um but yeah yeah so we keep going we never quite get to the end of the first question so as long as you're fine with that then you should carry on right i like it i am awesome it's your show so we can i love it i i've really embraced i realized i got diagnosed last year with add not knowing that was a thing not realizing i had it and growing up being very good at school like i always like to like i wasn't i wasn't diagnosed i think and that's again a bias in health where little boys get diagnosed with adhd because you know they can't sit still in classrooms and it gets diagnosed very early so therefore let's put them all like on tranquilizers basically and little girls apparently and the bias with atd and is actually i had no i was in class i was i could sit still i could sit still but maybe teachers would notice that i wasn't always paying attention i would get distracted or i would start talking a lot but those things weren't frowned upon right those were just like oh ellie's just like you know she's a sweet kid and she she does her homework anyway so it's fine and it took me almost yeah 30 years to get diagnosed and realized that this is something and this explains a lot of things in my life like literally everything like from you know how i speak how i get distracted how i can get how i think about different things at so many things so many things um but hey i got diagnosed that's really nice and it explained a lot and i can now work with it so when i see conversations like taking their own turn or or meeting sometimes where i over speak i'm like that's okay it's part of me and it's okay and i think it's it's yeah it's something different right it's difference that is okay to have diversity again going back to that that idea that if we are different it's fine because my brain thinks differently than others if if you're providing a customer experience journey yeah for people a significant portion of the world has adv did you say it was yeah um and and so having someone in that design process to go oh at this point i'm i'm off i'm going somewhere [Laughter] exactly you know because here's the thing it's the same when you when you design something for um people with who are vision impaired or for people who are hearing impaired those who have no impairment have a better experience with what you've designed as a result of it it's not oh you've made it better for it for people with a hearing impairment and everybody else is suffering everyone gets a better experience yeah definitely i wish i wish certain things had less steps let's go back to that was me yesterday do i have to transfer then i have to put it into when made a mask i've only recently you know considering how long i've been encrypted which is ridiculous and now i have to add custom tokens okay now i've done that and now i have to go on to a different shade and then i have to do this like i swear to god i was there for 90 minutes i was getting crosser and cross and cross and crosser yeah and then i was like oh no apparently it's sort of subscribed even though it says it's still open that's why it keeps saying insufficient funds because i was expecting it to say i was reading it as insufficient funds on my behalf not on their behalf like no but that's fascinating and actually all the user experience that you went through was super frustrating and it there's it has to be improved there's somewhere there where things should be much easier and i think the space has gone pretty well in that sense that i think things are easier than in 20 and i wasn't there but like 2012 2013 14. we didn't have half those things that i meant right yeah part of the steps the wallet infrastructure was not there you just have bitcoin as well but even that like even running a wallet was that was like a whole thing it wasn't like today where we have like i don't know like 10 15 non-custodian wallets to choose from mobile you know and that are not that are not this is the thing i mean it shows that there is so much opportunity for people to come in with different skill sets you know creating a better ux journey is is a skill set that a whole bunch of people already have and we just need to make sure that we invite them women women particularly can you hear this message because you know the men are already coming in we want the women to come in too please um across so many disciplines would you like if you were like to give a call to women out there listening to this podcast because i i was actually checking the data on these little podcasts that i do and half of the audience is female i was like oh my god i have an equal audience yeah well it's it's amazing isn't it you have a female host who is interesting intelligent has incredible guests on um and people can immediately see hey this is for i i see myself in this i can see a person reflected um and and if things are designed with gender balance in mind it doesn't put men off just attracts everyone so so what would i say to the women and i would say i say um you know guys if you're if you know some really great curious um women please direct them to this podcast to the bigger pie community to women in blockchain communities where they can come in and get their turn the water discover their curiosity and then accelerate their progression into their careers here i was talking to a few people in the big pie actually and they were saying your career progression in this in this space is four times as fast as it is in the in traditional space it's growing so fast that you what it will take you four years to move in position and in salary increase will take you one year and why would you not come in and you can shape the world right you can shape building a better world don't wait until it's built come in and help us build it i like that i like this uh this call to action of being able to shape the future we're definitely and don't let anyone think that i feel like i hear this a lot like oh it's too late i thought it was too late do you remember that feeling maybe i also came in the same time as you like 2017.

yeah and i already remember feeling like oh my god there's no way i'm catching up i felt just like the trains going so it's so nascent right now it's so so new we we can't even imagine what is still yet to be built on here but in the same ways we thought the internet was going to democratize us in the same way we thought social media was going to democratize us unless we have people who are using this technology to build things that are sparer more sustainable um we are the technology won't be used for that so please come in and help us shape and build and if you have ideas but you're not technical we can help you with that if you've got technical ideas but you need other support team members in there we can help with that you know if you want to go and work for a firm we can help with that if you want education we can help with that there are lots of communities out there designed just to do that definitely it is a space i think where you know the whole like manifested is a thing in the space like if you actually like drop into any community and you're like hi my name is this is what i know this is what i want to do people i feel like the chances of someone reaching out to here are really high like it's really about just and maybe that's the scary part is it does require putting yourself out there i am lost i am looking for something i need this in the beginning at least you have to sort of yeah yeah not be afraid to ask for help well throughout the rest of our journeys the the most intelligent people are the ones who ask questions not the ones who give the answers you know is asking the right questions um and the way that you ask a question can give people can completely and utterly change people's wounds about something oh i always thought it was this but now that you've asked asked the question that way huh maybe maybe we need to look at a solution that that is covers that you know so there's loads of great ways that we can learn just from asking questions your curiosity this idea of the experience that we were talking about we have different experiences so we learn things differently we see things differently um so yeah ask your questions but look if if asking your questions because they're i mean i love to learn through people right and as i said different people like to learn from different things um i am naturally quite gegarious person and i'm old enough now to figure out that i'm not the one who needs to know everything i want to be in the bridge it's well named uh that connects all of all of you know the bigger pie is about saying here let us help you on your pathway in your journey and connect you to all the resources the communities the opportunities the education uh the roles and we'll help you with that we'll hold your hand through that journey you'll have a you'll have a community of peers who will support you you'll get mentoring you'll get coaching and you'll walk you know you'll you'll walk into environments with much more agency much more confidence to match your competence but if you aren't the sort of person who wants to ask a question in a group i have it all the time people dm me so just reach out to one person and if if you're in the bigger pie reach out to me i am more than happy i do not know all the answers but i know the people who know the answers so then i either do i'll either go back into the group and ask the question myself so that we can get the answer without having you know somebody having to be named if they're not comfortable with that or i'll set up and i a private group saying this is the question that's being raised can you please help and connect because i think you guys are going to know it might be about fashion and metabolism so you know there's there's a handful of people who are in that field that i could bring into that conversation we've had that when it comes to salary negotiations because c-suite salary negotiations when tokens are involved as well as cash as well as equity in this new space how do you know what the market price is how do you know what to look for what are the different agreements that should happen you know this is not transparent and out there so again we bring in people who have experience with that and we can hold that conversation with you um asking questions is great because when they will run workshops for everyone to to participate and learn contribute in that so yeah so and so i'll either put on events to try and answer the question um i'll i'll i if i can answer i will i'll introduce you privately i'll introduce you publicly in the group so everyone else can learn from that question there's just a whole bunch of ways that we can help you or i'll just put you to some resources you know but if you don't ask we can't serve you definitely and it's it's an amazing work you're doing everything you've just described um you know connecting people being there being responsive do you ever feel i mean as a community builder do you ever feel overwhelmed you know by these messages in the sense like it's it's a lot like because i know the bigger pie is pretty big now uh just in terms of sheer numbers how do you deal with it well my response cut off times i turn off your phone sometimes no i mean my responsive time is anywhere from absolutely immediately to oh crap i miss that message and it's three weeks later and i'm so sorry um and i've got one of those right now and i said it's like ah damn i haven't done that i keep making me go back into it that's that's the thing about you know when we've got these platforms is at least in in um an email i can say unread and then just show the unread email so i can go through them but on telegram and what's that you can't organize it that way yet so if anyone's yeah feel free to solve that for us that would be very useful um but no i mean i'm just literally blown away this this this is just what happens right so when we have curbed first came in and we it was scary we didn't know what was going on we were globally locked down we had streets of london and new york which normally has millions of people milling around it just completely empty um and also you were locked in with whoever you were locked in with so for some people that was fine for other people that was either on your own or you know if you're younger you're probably in a house with more people in less room then you know i mean i was lucky because i was in norfolk at the time so i had a garden and space and and what have you and plenty of places to do walks but anyway it was a scary time and we didn't know what to do we didn't know how long we were on paul's fall so you're like okay well this is this is unique how does one navigate it and then i saw jen apache and victoria thompson take charge of their local community not crypto just their local community uh and they made sure that those who couldn't get out had an opportunity for supplies they organized how those supplies could be paid for and they just went we're just gonna serve our community you know okay that's what i'll do so we arrange coffee mornings on zoom and things like this um but it but that made me feel as though i had i wasn't at the mercy of something i had no control of um but you know that inspiration came from the community members and i just i just get such reward by people the testimonies we have about how they've um got promotions got new jobs discovered opportunities etc etc and then seeing how the community serves itself like there's no way this works if everyone's relying on me to do everything it's absolutely not at all um and so yes see it's just being involved with all of these incredible women in this community and i'm looking forward to being able to work more with the whole ecosystem and and add men on to that as well because these last two years of building the reputation of building the support system of building the community of understanding how to support women and trying out and piloting all of those ideas we're there now and now it's time to get serious and that's time zoo it's it's time to to really grow and take all our learnings into place and that requires interacting with everyone but yeah no just spending time in the community fills my soul so i if you'll forgive me when sometimes i miss messages or i take a bit longer i feel like i'm for me it is difficult sometimes to follow up with everyone and i i do get overwhelmed sometimes and i just suddenly it's just like it's too much but it's but i also i i also shared the reward like you just shared like when something does go well when i can help someone can i when i can make meaningful connections like that's priceless actually there is no price to it usually it's just it's your time it's your passion it's you knowing people and just connecting the dots and being like you need to talk to that person then that person absolutely need to be part of your project or at least talk to them and i do try to do that as much as i can i think that is the role that we're setting when we try to manage communities is that we're also fostering it and giving value to them but sometimes i do feel overwhelmed and i'm like so think about what the overwhelm is is is the overwhelm guilt no it's just it's it's like the sheer amount of private messages sometimes but i'm not maybe you get more than i do but which is fine but i mean i i i tend to think so things like overwhelm like if i need a break i take a break um i have as part of my getting old and the lessons that we learn in life like i can only i'm only one person i can only do so much and don't compare myself to somebody else because if i say i'm only one person and i compare myself to other people in the group i'm not like they're not human i don't know how they do as much as they do because i work quite hard and i work quite long hours yet they still just produce so much stuff so i'm not going to compare myself i'm going to do my best um the idea of being perfect is is the worst thing for a community leader who is trying to empower well allow other people to have agency you do not want to be perfect if that's the case how can anyone show up with our authentic selves so you know you know i say you know doesn't mean you say you see every message that's in there but you know i share sometimes when i have anxiety i shared when i was having a difficulty with what was going on with my my parents house and uh what have you because i think we should be able to show up as 360 degrees of who we are i get yeah it's i'm learning i'm learning and it's nice to see other examples actually of women being more vulnerable i feel like there's a tendency either to it's all these stigmas again right it goes back to the socialization we've been brought up with you women are sweet nice competent reliable and do not be weak right if you're weak you're you're out of the game um and maybe those are just you know internal socialization to get over with at some point and be like yeah well vulnerable away with that but it's hard yeah well vulnerability is strengths so it depends how you frame things and how you feel about them vulnerability is 100 strength if you can't recognize all feelings how can you process them how can you be aware see you're you're a marshmallow guy right he wasn't able to show a vulnerable side so he went i have to be confident despite my lack of competency i can't show that i'm vulnerable that's not a good leader and then he didn't show up the next day yeah so he wasn't able to process what happened why it happened he wasn't able to catch himself beforehand vulnerability read bernie brown stuff she does a whole work on it researched academically in field work so yeah vulnerability is about strength it's about knowing who you are where you're at what you're good at what you're not good at where you need to set your boundaries what you can take on that you can do well what you shouldn't touch i've learned so much about like i think that's been a constant work for me since i've been in crypto it's like learn how to say no learn not to put boundaries you do not have to work with everyone you shouldn't work with everyone you need to be more strict and you have to say no it's really that's been and it's contradictory to being an entrepreneur because as an entrepreneur you're looking for security as well and you're trying to you know also get clients in and money in but at the same time saying no and being sometimes principled is oh that's my journey that's what i'm learning is like it's and that's difficult but i but i love it and i guess you said it before crypto is accelerated it's i would never have had the opportunities or the situation i'm in if i had gone let's say in a traditional sector and i would you know but this is also the complete opposite this is a lot of freedom which means that you are your own accountant business manager marketeer um everything at once right i think there's a there's a tech talk going on right now where's there it's kind of nice one which is like i am bold i am sexy i'm smart i'm like it's like this tick tock that sort of like shows that a woman is like multi-faceted and not just one thing um but it's it's difficult to i guess be in crypto and want or to to be all of those things uh uh yeah i don't know again i'm rambling but i'm just i'm thinking right now of a woman in crypto which i look up to and for any woman out there looking for inspiration and i hope one day she'll come on my podcast as well that's one of my secrets um now me brockwell like there's not many women in crypto that i look up to that much the content she puts out the quality of it the educational side of it while being in crypto for really a long time um and you can also look at her older videos which were super cute she used to sing and do like crypto songs and and stuff like that and and now you know all the way to interviewing edward snowden and just making sure that the space grows and is is educated about certain values i yeah it's it's hard hard to be out there as a woman as a content creator um and not becoming just a shill machine so the moment um i think when you're being paid to show projects it gets messy and it's really difficult because it's so tempting there's so much money there's so much money to be made to just promote whatever pump and dump is around and and and as an educator or anyone out there um realize that even if you're being paid really well someone else is going to lose money like you're making money at the cost of someone else investing and and probably not making as much as you are just for a tweet or for a video or you know for a shout out i yeah yeah how do you choose your partners with the bigger pie like is that something you're do you get pitched by projects that are like yeah we're going to give tokens to our community and you're like wait you know um i don't i think our community is too insular our communities that would be tempting you have numbers right like you know in the sense like if i'm a project who's trying to raise funds or awareness i would tap definitely into the bigger pie but no but like it's it's a unique they're i guess there's you're right we have a responsibility right so not everyone in to one not everyone in the bigger pie is necessarily crypto per se it's blockchain dlts there are there are um you know um but they're all in the space um but so for example jean-pierre right what she's doing with edgar leger that's that she doesn't really need the crypto side of it but she's doing incredible work that the world needs and winning awards for it and you know and seeing the success so if if somebody came to me and said look if you sell this to your audience you can make a lot of money would you do it and not unless it was in alignment not at all not unless it's an alignment and i wouldn't really i wouldn't get i would do my best to avoid the conversation about money to keep the the temptation off the table like let's find out what you want what you're aligned with and what you do and let me ask you a whole bunch of questions if that's in alignment with what with what's going on in the bigger pie then we can have a conversation about the best ways for you to benefit from the community right um yeah and i do it that way and just have faith that what i'm gonna build you know what we're building what i see in the future is is all gonna work out without having to you know with integrity in touch as you say hmm you mentioned earlier that with this tech you know we could solve a lot of things do you feel like there's also a tendency to expect too much of blockchain like that in the like which use cases or which use cases make sense in crypto and are there some you think that are we we would like crypto and blockchain to solve it but it's it's just not going to happen do you feel like there's a sometimes a divide there where we we're projecting our hopes for the future onto crypto i definitely think that blockchain isn't the panacea and the solution to everything but i think used intelligently and wisely it is part of a tech stack that can um solve some some problems it's a real world problem so again we'll go back to jean viv levay um so what she is looking at doing food um food insecurity is massive we have farmers particularly around the equator going to bed hungry i always cry every time i i say that fact because i don't understand how people are growing in agriculture and they can't even feed themselves how is that possible how is how have we got to a world where that happens um so she's helping mango farmers um who are smallholder farmers who wouldn't ordinarily get onto the order of a supply chain to a to a um supermarket but by helping them to bring all of their products in together then they can fulfill an order and then she looks at the steps that is used throughout the entire journey so she looks at um who's responsible for which parts so once the mango has been grown by the farmer and then it's picked up by the people who start to deliver it the farmer has no no control anymore of what's going on she just looks at who who what part of the journey does this person have um the responsibility in and then how can we make sure that they get paid and there's finance in that to make sure that everyone gets the fair share of what's going on and ultimately the mango farmers get um a much fairer share for what they're doing but she's also bringing in iot into this she's bringing in um machine learning into this because there are ways that we can control with the iot you know weed what what the conditions are that the the mangoes are being transported in for for an easy example they have to be kept at a certain temperature so let's use iot and just to record that and to make sure that that is happening and then once once that's been proven to be the case then those payments can be made because it's already pre-agreed and then there's various machine learning that she's using to be able to take a lot of the data that they're gathering and make predictions and being able to help um so there's less food wastage and then more finance the finance is more evenly distributed to those in the supply chain that's my summation of what she does so i think that's a very good uk use case of blockchain and then how can we put that into other supply chains interesting for me um i'm already checking the website by the way because i i haven't i hadn't like had a deep dive into agri ledger at all uh it's automatically my brain jumps to uh the food network uh which is another blockchain for corporates built in amsterdam and i feel like i should put them in contact if they're not already if they don't already know of each other yeah but it's the whole i know that the whole supply chain is a mess that it takes that it's really hard basically to reward the farmer the farmer is basically the entity being dumped on right and all the middlemen in between and and the the time for processing payments is ridiculous um and obviously you know transparency and and quality of products is always something that's we're trying to solve obviously for the crypto person inside of me i'm like oh well it's private blockchain so not interesting but there is something to be said there is something here that has to be unlocked i was just wondering does agri ledger i would start asking questions like which blockchains are they're using what consensus algorithms are they using is it federated blockchain i would start getting i can't find the white paper but bring jean valve on the show basically basically no but it's we just i feel like we've had a tendency to and i've seen every project under the sun from you know transparency and quality of weed we had like icos in 2017 i don't know focusing on that all the way to solving pharmaceuticals you know and and and and um what is it called uh counterfeited drugs and that's where blockchain you know ideally would like be something to be used to like sort of timestamp these products and then there was always sort of the meme right do you sort of just slap a qr code on each pineapple is that where we're going you know how far does the iot go and then of course where is this data being and all these questions of like if you're using a private blockchain then you're not using blockchain basically you're just using a very sometimes more expensive more cumbersome database database so but but we need to have these conversations and we need to see these products being tested and battle tested and if it's not working maybe the market doesn't want it you know that's also something as simple as yeah i mean the idea of saying that by putting something onto a public ledger solves all the supply chain issues is so naive and simplified i mean when you've got when you've got corruption that exists um in various geographies and jurisdictions around the globe where supply chains have to go um you know someone's just going to say well we're not going to use this system aren't we i mean it's there's one thing saying okay we've invented some code that solves a problem but getting a user adoption that's a whole other thing yeah and i i remember i think it's uh mex the the big shipping company at some point was like oh i remember these were news in 2018 we were getting so excited about it we're like oh my god blockchain's mainstream like samsung using blockchain and merc's like trying to do something with their shipping and cargo and and there are more initiatives that way but obviously these companies are like well actually we enjoy the opacity we're not celebrating it but you know our margins are yeah it keeps ourselves well this is where we need brave companies to come in and say can i swear well yeah of course yes of course you can swear like what no no no no it's okay because then you have to have different things on your own it's you know f the opacity we are all about transparency and if we can see companies do that successfully then that will put pressure on other companies right saying well if they can do it why can't you if you're i feel like you're trying to hide something now so i'm going to choose with my consumer spending not to spend with you i can see that that can work but it needs somebody somewhere to be able to figure out how to do a supply chain that is open and transparent and public and unacceptable that the question is i think in this market if you go to a supermarket today it's really hard to know which company is good and not and these labels are extremely confusing and sometimes they don't mean anything and so as a consumer you're usually lost and so the only reason i would say companies would start using this tech it's if it's faster cheaper and they make profit or they are able to lose less money in the process something like that yeah or or reflect it on the end price so the customer would pay more for that transparency and yeah i mean i personally would always pay more if i knew that the um footprint of what i'm buying it has done the least amount of harm that i mean that's how that's how low i i think the standards are is how can i make sure i've done the least amount of harm because i i addicted to avocados i'm possibly not actually physically addicted to avocados but i like to eat avocados a lot but i can't eat an avocado without picking up and go ha okay so now the mexican cartels are involved with avocados because they're worth so much so what am i doing on that design also what's the food mileage on this avocado like i was told oh you need to eat more oily fish because you know of the of the benefits of the amiga uh three oils that you can't get anywhere else from fish and i was like yeah but i've seen see conspiracy how and every time i buy some fish i'll try and eat some fish i'm like yeah but you do not see how you're killing the plant so you know and then i try and buy some clothes and i'm like well i could go to primark um because that's really you know really cheap and cheerful but come on at those prices they're going to have to have child labor in their supply chain and it's been reported that that's been found to be the case or i could go and say right i'm going to spend 5 000 in a high-end fashion and guess what they also have child labor in their supply chain i can't i can't say okay i'm going to pay more and then know that i'm doing better usually with food it can say it's organic and it says where it's come from right so at least i have two metrics and i can make an easy consumer decision on so i would love to be able to scan it that says carbon footprint food miles uh and whether or not you know no children were harmed in the making of this of this avocado you know just something like that would be an improved and improved purchasing and i would do whatever was required to to get that information it's a really interesting um i was brought up obviously watching what's his face all gores documentary you know i can't remember the one where the world's ending and you know the earth and everything and oceans rising and i studied actually water management because i thought i would work in the environmental sector i have since and this might be a bit controversial but i've since just dropped it completely and that guilt that we've been put on i think is ridiculous it's hurting us mentally to do like shopping or anything and it's just we are i'm not sure we're being properly informed on on anything and and this guilt of of traveling or eating ever i want you to eat your avocados with a peace of mind that actually it economically makes sense okay maybe it's not the greatest you mentioned mexican mafia maybe but but if you did not buy that avocado then that avocado would not be sold abroad and other people would suffer economically and maybe it's because i've sort of rationalized a lot of things through free market ideals but i feel like if you're buying it you want it enough that someone else on the other side of this planet is making a living now is it a great living is it you know is it the standard of living that you're having in the uk probably not like an avocado it does come from it doesn't grow in norfolk but are you going to stop eating avocados yeah pretty much i i i i know i know i know i know but i mean honestly my my eat all the avocados enjoy your phone which has all the rare earth elements that i have traveled three times around the earth okay but enjoy your phone but don't enjoy your phone and upgrade it every every single 12 months right okay that's okay yeah sure you use your phone these things are not disposable we have become right i'm such a disposable society we don't wait for things we don't grow things we want to happen now and we want to happen now and then we bin it and we dispose of it and this this is this is not we need to become much more conscious in our thinking but we're already really busy so can we make our conscious consumer easier by having just some metrics when i pick something up that says these three things you're okay with well you did it with fair trade the idea behind fair trade now the execution that's another subject matter right we do it by saying it's organic food actually all food should be called food and if it's not organic it should be called chemically processed hormonally injected messed around with not real food food chemicals and quality pesticides have also allowed us to create and have more food with less farmers on this planet even though it has destroyed what you would call like more traditional and on the planet as we go along so and the planet but there is there's hunger today in this world not because we're not capable of producing food it's because for political reasons usually uh that some places still use food as as a you know as a political prop like it's not like we've we figured out a lot like we could right now have no food hunger you know we don't instead what we've got what we've got if you are to believe should we say that what we've got is we are destroying the planet and we're having um areas that are being flooded that aren't stable that we can't go on where we're making people migrate um and that is not a better world than having less people who who can farm on larger plots in my opinion i know there's this bad ever there's bad and good there's a lot of opportunity for us to shape the world to be fair and sustainable and please can more women come in and look at these issues that we're talking about and saying okay this is fascinating i wonder what technologies can allow us to do to reach across the world have more transparency about what's happening have more opportunities for people to in a free market put their money where their mouth is much more easily and this i think the technology can help with abs and i actually like all this talk about traceability made me think of an app that i actually use nothing to do with crypto uh it's called i don't know if you know it yooka okay now i'm just showing an app that but this is an amazing app okay like when you're looking for cosmetics and it's the wild west out there and you scan because all these products already have a qr code right the barcode so you're in the shop and you're scanning your products and then you look at this you know deodorant or whatever and you can see the ingredients and you can see what other ingredients there are in it and it actually tells you in a very simple way you don't have to know these things you don't have to know these ingredients it tells you if it's good like green excellent or like you know dangerous don't go don't go there poor you know this will give you cancer like you know it says it's green and lovely this was tested on animals which we know is a hard no for you yeah that's what i'm looking for so here is dove dove is a hazardous it's bad it's red here in this app i think it's fascinating and this for me has allowed me to shop for cosmetics you know and take the guilt away take the guilt away and also make sure that what i'm putting on myself is not weird and won't create like weird hormonal hormonal you know reactions yeah blah blah blah well we need that with food we 100 need that with food and clothing yeah clothing is also a mess very big mess so that was the supply chain to answer your question where do i see the greatest possibility the supply chain is one and the second one is it is financial inclusion so we have women historically women and women women historically have not been allowed i mean we only recently would have been allowed to have our own bank accounts and credit cards right right obviously we can't hold on money bridgette obviously like when we're on our period we're going to spend it all it becomes spherical and obviously okay yeah i'm glad someone else was managing our money for no sorry yeah um and and we in the western world have more access to finances than the average person in other parts of the world do yeah so you have all of these women who are wonderfully organized in communities and they have it's called different things across different parts of the world but a village savings uh and loans accounts or bslas where what they do is they bring the money that they have in the community and they pull it together and they say here we'll loan this to you so that you can go and buy the seed that you need for whatever so that you can plant it and you can have a problem you can have something to sell and then you pay it back to us the issue there is all they can do is sustain they can't begin to build and thrive because it's only that amount of money that stays in their communities right if we can now digitize that uh and offer access for economies from outside of their little community to be able to come in to offer micro loaning microfinancing there is a way that people have previously been excluded or held down financially we can now open up a much um greater world to them and the traditional financial systems just said they wanted to do it their legacy systems means it's not cost effective so if we take away cost of you know ineffective legacy systems and we build the tech from scratch we have the capability of being able to deliver at a price where everyone wins and i think that's huge you and i had this conversation before is that you know when you came out of looking at giving people clean water if they just have enough financial standing they can access to water um and so this is where i see this is hugely powerful on a micro level that's brilliant that all of these people who previously haven't had access to finances can now do that and see what they can do with it that's brilliant for each one of them on a macro level women put 90 of what their wealth is back into their communities so it helps on a macro level as well [Laughter] so those are my two two two two areas that i that i might go to areas it's making me think of a project called ethic hub and i just saw that agri ledger was retweeting something and they were mentioned as well and i've seen them around for a couple of years now i can't remember exactly their token economics but i do remember the use case which was micro financing for farmers i believe in mexico through crypto the whole different difficult side of the business bd basically of basically bringing capital from the western world to mexico in sort of a peer-to-peer way was that people were more interested in investing in crypto the return on investment of being in crypto is hot well you know depends when it depends when we're just sort of saying you know yeah exactly it doesn't always go up um was that that was one of the issues basically is that people in crypto but but it's a really interesting use case and of course for farmers in new mexico that can't have a bank account et cetera et cetera so that was a very interesting product have you spoken to dr chris cleverley at i don't think so okay i'll introduce you he'd be someone great to have on the podcast as well um so yeah i mean i'll let him tell you the story because he knows it's so much better but basically i think it's i think the business is called tingo he has a couple of projects um and what they're doing is they're doing the micro financing with mobile phones i think um and most of the loans go to women because women pay the loans back and um he's actually most of his staff are women and it's doing phenomenally well so that's really fascinating you can talk to him about actually how that's working in in areas in different regions and i mean the moment you have mobile penetration you know or like it the sky's the limit i feel like that that's definitely a place where with crypto and blockchain we are leapfrogging all these institutions which require you know paper blog going to the office between three and four like no that's go like that's gone yeah you don't need to go into town anymore to be able to get money and your identity and your credit scores we can we can look we can reimagine how we do that so that it's it's not i mean but not the way china's doing it no no no no no no no we can reimagine it not coffee certain systems that that are questionable um yeah so yeah so so i think there's there's a lot of excitement for a lot of good i don't actually pay that much attention to a lot of the noise that's out there um because there is a lot of noise and maybe that noise is helpful with regards to making our systems more robust you know where we can see where it's more easy for people to be able to be fraudulent and learn from that and maybe make that a bit more robust it might be that actually these these projects that i don't think have real world solutions attached to them are playing around with technology that brings in solutions that we can transfer across but i don't really pay much attention to what's going on i i look at where i see people building it's hard it's hard there is so much noise and let's not mention the name of the idea that you've invested in but can i just i didn't i didn't i failed oh you did it but you you wanted to right like let's just imagine you had what made you think these this team is different or or this project is different and this is where i want to put my money it was as simple as it was a member of the bigger pie community it was for an idea that i think is interesting not necessarily unique um but i thought no you know i i do not so you did ask me the question about investing i don't invest that much i would like to invest more but that's more to do with you know you invest what you can afford to invest right yeah um yes i would love everybody listening do not invest what you cannot afford to lose definitely exactly and then you can take your profits it's the first time you go in and you lose i'm sorry for you but it's the first time you go in um and and then you make some gains then you know you can take out your original investment and everything else you're playing with you you might not be able to afford to lose but there's still a thing about so one of the things that i will talk about is that i used to be a financial advisor i know what you're supposed to do with your money when you're when you're saving i know what you don't do you know i've advised other people on that but if you don't have the money to do it then then it's then it doesn't help you at all and the returns that you get in the traditional financial sectors that you're able to get into because you're not sufficient not deemed to be a sophisticated and um investor because you don't have the wealth yet so you're excluded from the opportunities that actually make the real gains and that's that's completely flawed and i don't have the financial um well-being that i should have because of my journey as a woman who became a parent society's expectations on the roles that mothers should bring in rather than fathers um and all the other things that you know hold women back from reaching their career potential some of which i mentioned i had to you know i wasn't given a promotion i i had to leave a job because it wasn't open to me both just basically appeal on gender nothing to do with review performances so i'm now like okay well how am i going to get my financial stability i have to take more risk because if i lose what i have right now the impacts on my future life will be less significant than if i can make good gains on it so that's how i'm choosing to define what risk is risk is not having the opportunity to go out and like in the same way as you're you're you know when you're an entrepreneur what's your motivation hopefully your motivation is because you really believe in the solution that needs to come out in the world and you throw away all traditional financial um ways of thinking to get there you know you go all in you put everything in believing that there will be a reward outside of that which will then have a financial reward attached to it so i'm kind of just choosing to do that with what i'm doing um with building the bigger pie making sure that we can build an ecosystem that brings value to everyone where that value can flow through and bring value to the bigger pie and invest in the ecosystem as i as i go along doing that it's we'll find out yeah we'll find out we'll find out how how it pans out i would love to hear something you'd like to share with us for the show-and-tell if you don't mind like showing something you like and that we should look into my my son said to me bridget you have such a big personality and sometimes your hard work and i was like what do you mean by a big personality normally if someone says a big personality to me i think oh they mean flamboyant and loud and physically big and take up space but i think what he what he meant as we had a bit more of a conversation is i don't have that many light conversations there's always a lesson to be learned in an experience which for a teenager is magnificently annoying whereas for me when i'm thinking how can i learn from everything that i'm doing so we can shape and make a better world it's just just living and breathing um so and i haven't always been like this but this is this is a reflection of where i am in my journey right now and so my thing is is my favorite book so i have a number of books that i have been reading and listening to um that allow me to understand why we have the issues with um the gender issues that we do like what does work what doesn't work the history of actually how women were computers and and you know now we have you know those things i find fascinating and interesting and also helps to debunk some of the myths that we have that we've been just not good at stem disagree um but my favorite book is this one it's i i responded what works gender equality by design because she's really got help with what the solution is so we don't have a playbook for a solution we don't otherwise we would see companies with with better gender balances okay we see better equality in financial pay and all those things but it does talk about and i've touched on is we have structural systems in play a lot of the time we go through using them and doing them without giving it a second sort and we need to understand where our unconscious biases are hurting people are preventing us from onboarding the best talent after preventing us from seeing problems out there before they happen um are preventing us from imagining and creating incredible solutions that we can bring to the world but we have to design practices that allow us when those moments come to follow a design system um that allows us to do that unconscious biased training has been proven to do more harm than good uh and i i read somewhere that someone said oh well if it's a conscious bite if you've had the unconscious advice training then is now conscious that's not how the mind works right what what foot do you put your sock on every morning first i'm i'm not sure i'm conscious of it yeah okay it'll be the same foot every day we have no idea what it is right if i then say to you okay but you don't know so one measure it tomorrow morning i'll think about it put a no no wake up every time i wake up put a note put a note by your sock and say which foot am i putting on first then i'll say to you okay now that's now that's that's that's no longer unconscious bias right on this argument it's conscious so now i want you to put your circle on your left foot that's the same thing as when yoga is like put you know uncross and then re-cross the other way yeah so now that you know that you put it on the right foot and if i said you you'll live five years longer if you put it on your left foot you will not be able to put it on your left foot without putting a design practice in place to be able to change that behavior does that make sense wait i need to think that oh sorry i would redesign because i'm sure that i'm going to live five years longer no i didn't understand that correctly yeah sorry so you put let's assume that you're correct and you put your sock on your right foot yeah every day and i say to you okay now i want you to put your sock on your left foot every day okay let's try it you can come back in a week and we can say we can tweet and say did it work okay just just on this conversation i've now told you and and for the sake of this experiment if you do put it on your left um foot you will live for five years longer okay healthy five years a really healthy five years as well right okay just assume just to see okay that this was true yeah let's go and see if you manage to one figure out which stock you put on your foot first two do five consecutive days with putting on the other one with no tools have no tools to do it just wake up and remember yes okay i'm following i'm following i can do this i can do this yeah okay and then see how well you get on at the end of the day you can have a mechanism that says did i count did i remember or nothing just at the end of five days let's just check in right and you'll be like oh i forgot i didn't do it or i did it brilliantly all right i'd be amazed if you did it flawlessly and then we could say okay let's do it for the next five days and let's put in a design system that means that you don't forget that when you put yourself on you're easily reminded which foot you need to put it on that day does that make sense it does i i understand the mechanism and i remember downloading actually an app to get like you know better sleeping patterns or you know be more chill with my life or something like that and it's really difficult because our brain likes short-term rewards and so if i'm not immediately rewarded for putting my my sock on my left foot then i'm like why would i do it i think it's it's interest but why not what if i assume that i would live five years longer sure but there's so many irrational things that i do which are yeah but also why is it more difficult to put it on the other foot it's the same mechanical process right but today that's an activity that is let's call it i'm not mindful i should be more mindful we could we should all join yip's meditation classes more often obviously but if i'm not being mindful of these moments it's also because i choose not to think about there are certain things that i choose to think about and then you know certain things like we do not have the mental capacity to have a cognitive thought about everything exactly i there's some things i just do instantly and i'm not thinking oh i should brush my teeth this way it's just i'm brushing my teeth okay and so that's exactly what happens when we have unconscious bias and when it's harming people when it's harming our business then we should have a motivation to turn around and say let's put a design practice into that so that we can course correct being told about it does not change your behavior no it doesn't but if you have to put in a different but for example it's like smoking smoking i used to smoke i stopped smoking just because i was getting headaches and i was coughing in the morning and i thought this is not i wonder what that's related to this is not going well i should probably stop this um and it kind of happened gradually and wasn't like oh my god i'm going to stop now because otherwise i wouldn't have stopped i think it sort of happened naturally um but again huge bias there because i know that smoking is bad but i was still doing it so there's certain things that we do even though we know they're not good for us same thing at a company we'll do something because we're just easier too than not in that moment something like that or we don't think about the oh i'm actually like diminishing my lifespan right now i just like smoking yeah i just ate i feel good we're drinking hey those moments are gone now for me but i i can't help but when i see someone smoking on on screen or when i see people smoking around me i'm always like it's okay it's not that big of a loss but it's something that i know that i was doing that where i knew it wasn't bad it was bad for me so imagine at a company scale you're managing 500 people you have crazy kpis you're you're turning in a couple billion or a million per year how do you then figure out how we're going to change something so that we don't all die well it's not something we don't all die but in this context it's so that we can attract and retain the best talent and you're correct when all of these things are going on and we don't know how to do it yeah then that that is a challenge and i get that um so what's one of the reasons why fingers crossed and if we can get some funding for it we'll be in um working with uc berkeley to do a playbook for for companies in the blockchain space because it's a more remote based business we have dowels that are there organizations that are popping up which are completely different structures that are i really want to join anyone oh anybody listening dallas are like jump in jump in and swim and drown and swim again and see the chaos you know um and and and this time that they need time to experiment all these things yeah and there's so much that yeah thinks that building fast trying to find the right talent there's not enough talent let alone turning around and saying you know let alone turning around and saying oh we need to make sure that actually we we've gone through our language and made sure that we've gender-neutraled it or we've tweaked it towards being more um gender-friendly for women and less obviously um gendered for men and all of these things are the things that you can do but we do need to make it easy for these companies to be able to put these processes in place from day one right the sooner you put them in place the sooner you'll start growing your team with diversity and and we all go to networks with people who are like us so if you can get that diversity right at the beginning you'll always have a diverse network because they'll go off with you know other products that's a good tip for any startups out there is start from the get go don't say we'll do that later just and then it might be harder in the beginning but it's worth it in the long term i would say saying yes for hiring marketing from the get go do not wait till you've built something for two years in your basement and then say oh i'm going to mark it oh gosh those upset me so much i'm like no no no from the get-go from the get-go include talent and diversity otherwise you're just building something for yourself yeah so with the bigger pie what we want to do is make sure that we are creating a pipeline of women in senior positions to fill in the space we'll start off focusing on on engineering because because that is the biggest demand right now it's also the most well paid yeah um so that just makes sense and we need to have women in senior positions we can't fill women with junior positions with all the men with the with the with the power and the hiring decisions and the cultural making decisions at the top we need to be able to solve that problem for for four companies they are open to it they just need us they they need somebody else to solve it for them or at least help them sell it for themselves a lot more easily so one is is bringing in and upskilling and reskilling these women working with third-party um training partners out there and producing this peer-to-peer support network mentorship um coaching et cetera all the things that we've touched on before and then putting them into a toxic environment isn't going to help it's like fly and crash yeah exactly here we are you've re-skilled you've retrained you you've done all of this and now we're going to put you in a toxic environment that's not going to serve anyone so this is why i want to work with uc berkeley to create a playbook so we can give the playbook to the companies and they can enforce it um put it into play implement it rather than force it and implement it with the word i was looking for there and you know if you if you want some help with that fine we'll come in and do some consulting work and we'll help you to be able to to put it into practice and then continuously work with the women who are who are coming through to make sure that they've got continuous professional development so we'll start with the zero to cto program then we'll have a zero to cmo program and then we'll have women on boards and uh that sounds amazing that's really fun so what can we look forward with the bigger pie like you said zero to zero to cto zero to cmo a playbook just give us your ultimate pitch for the bigger pie where can we follow you and which what should we look forward uh in the future wonderful thank you very much so you can check us out on the website the bigger pie dot io um please reach out to me on linkedin you can find me at virginia.i think i come up on there um telegram widget tvp and email bridget at the bigger pi dot io if you are a company who has listened this long and would like to be able to be part of the solution then please get in touch and we can talk about what that looks like i want to speak to companies to understand you know if we do it's impossible to bring on people with three to five years experience the market's grown too big but if we can bring people in who have senior experience in web 2.0 and then train them up with web 3.0 i want to understand what what training needs continuous or before we put them into marketplace do do they want you know you you're hiring these people what do you want what you need let's have that conversation let's have the conversation once they're in that role how can we support their training so that they continue to be skilled whilst you guys are focusing on doing the main thing which is growing a business if you want to help us with this and you've got some grant funding that would be able to go with this we would love to hear from you i am going through a round of grant funding at the moment putting those applications in so that would be awesome um i i've spoken to a few protocols and they've said you know that this is what what is needed so yes please submit the applications um and if you're a woman who's curious at all or who can help who wants to get involved then please reach out to me i would love to hear from you um to be part of getting you into the industry or supporting others but whoever you are if you like the idea we'd love to hear from you there we are catch you all [Laughter] if you think this is a mission worthwhile please get in touch we'll figure out how to make it happen together love it love it i feel like the nic the name the bigger pie i feel like it you can so go with this marketing about like cake and like everybody should have a slice you know yeah everybody should get a cupcake or everybody everybody out there should get yeah what they deserve and and i'm really i wanted to say like thank you for fostering this community uh i'm one of those i guess more skeptics as well and i can say from being in the bigger pie what's up group and then telegram group and then the events and the opportunities and the support i am a little bit mind blown about how much the bigger pie has given me as well given me back in terms of community and and business so definitely a community that i'm very proud to be part of and i'm not the best contributor i feel like there's like so much going on sometimes like when i look at the chats i can't follow everything that's happening but definitely an exciting community to be a part of and to even if you don't know where you're at in life or in your career it's it's just it's been very supportive that's that's what i've really experienced and it's it's been really wonderful so thank you for fostering such a amazing generous community bridget it's it has a lot to do with you and the culture you're inspiring and and putting yourself out there so yeah thank you for all your work back to you thank you and without people like you in the community it wouldn't work so you're not supposed to be doing everything and following every message but you do do a lot to support and uplift and educate and i thank you for the work you do well i hope everybody enjoyed this podcast um bridget has been an absolute pleasure to have you on thank you for sharing your story and about your views about the space and how we can do it better let's let's see what the world of tomorrow will be i do have wishful thinking and hopes for the crypto space let's not see how it will be let's build it how we want it nice one very nice one on those wonderful words i'll be leaving all the links below thank you for joining until very soon bridget i hope i can see you in real life that would be great one of these days take care bye [Music] you