Wirex, a financial services platform offering a debit card with crypto functionality, announced the winners of its Rising Women in Crypto Power List for 2023. For the initiative, Wirex partnered with The Cryptonomist, a Swiss-based crypto website, and invited a team of industry experts to carefully examine the candidates.
The top 10 women in crypto
The winners of the 2023 Rising Women in Crypto Power list are as follows (in alphabetical order):
Amna Usman Chaudhry, MENA lead at Climate Chain Coalition
Amna has been active in the blockchain space since its early stages. She is an enthusiastic advocate for the positive impact of emerging technologies and a member of the first cohort of the Oxford Blockchain Strategy Program. In 2018, she co-founded BlockClean to address plastic pollution through tokenization.
Audrey Akwenye, co-founder of Black@
Audrey, an educator-turned-software engineer, embraced her tech career as a continuous pursuit of learning and expanding access. She aims to support diverse founders in building impactful tech companies. Notably, she leads Black@, the first token-gated all-black digital community with over 250 members, providing a digital space for black creators, founders, and funders.
Bridget Greenwood, founder of the Bigger Pie, co-founder of 200Bn Club
As the CEO and co-founder of Embolden Ventures, Belinda is dedicated to empowering women entrepreneurs in building innovative companies. She also champions an inclusive economy as the lead of the SG chapter of Women in Blockchain Asia (WIBA), a non-profit promoting women's leadership in the blockchain industry. She's also the head of partnerships SG for The Sandbox, a metaverse company.
Bridget Greenwood, founder of The Bigger Pie, co-founder of 200Bn Club
Bridget is an accomplished leader in the web3 industry. She founded The Bigger Pie, which supports exceptional women in fintech, and co-founded The 200Bn Club, a London-based accelerator firm for female entrepreneurs. Bridget employs a data-driven and holistic approach in her work. She led The Bigger Pie to support over 10,000 women in their businesses.
Caterina Ferrara, senior blockchain consultant & Analyst at AlmavivA
Caterina has emerged as a notable figure and leader in the cryptocurrency sector, recognized as a "LinkedIn Top Voice." She is committed to social causes and actively works toward leveraging crypto assets for charity. Caterina participated in a cryptocurrency fundraising campaign supporting the Umberto Veronesi Foundation.
Charmaine Short, operational test manager at Fnality International
Charmaine, a cryptocurrency enthusiast since 2019, co-founded the DAO Women of Crypto Art in 2020, offering education to artists and collectors on blockchain and promoting women's NFT art. Writing under the pseudonym Etta Tottie, she authored various articles, including a white paper promoting diversity and inclusivity in web3 applications. In 2022, she founded the web3 consultancy Ettaverse.
Lianna Adams, founder of Impactful Artistry, web3 advocate
Lianna is advocating for a humanity-first culture in the realms of arts, culture, and technology. With over 18,000 hours of speaking experience, she has shared plenty of insights on web3 technologies, mental health, and social impact within various communities. Lianna is an advisor to ARTXV, a neurodivergent collective in the web3 space.
Lori Souza, co-founder and COO at MetaFusion
Lori's multifaceted background spans management, brokerage, business, economics, education, coaching, process engineering, and technical support management. She is an organizer of Women in Crypto and an advisor to Women in Digital, holding the title Certified International Blockchain Advisor. In her consultancy, Lori focuses on areas such as financial future education, crypto payments, compliance, money transmission licensing, and crypto transaction forensic reporting.
Priya Guliani, CEO of Earth.ID
As a technology and impact entrepreneur, Priya advises both an impact fund and start-ups, contributing to the web3 community. She founded and leads the Sustainable Environmental Stewardship working group within the Government Blockchain Association (GBA), dedicated to aiding organizations in developing Sustainable, Attainable, and Maintainable solutions to combat climate change.
Yaliwe Soko, chairperson at the United Africa Blockchain Association
Yaliwe is a prominent speaker in the Web 3 space and a driving force behind the "1 million For Blockchain in Africa (1MB)" program, which aims to raise awareness of blockchain technology among a million people in Africa. Leading UABA, she has established chapters in nine African countries and brought venture capital to emerging tech start-ups through the UABA Start-up Initiative.
In addition to the Rising Women in Crypto Power nominations, Wirex has also recognized two other women in the Social Media Influencer of the Year and the Compliance Leader of the Year categories. The first title went to Randi Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of HUG, and the other to Natalia Latka, Crypto Compliance Regulatory Advisor at Merkle Science.
Stereotypically, the crypto industry has been considered to be dominated by men. Yet the reality check proves things are changing course. A recent survey conducted in Singapore showed that women are not only ambitious investors but quite often they're more active and bullish than men.
According to another research, Nigerian women are more crypto-aware than their male counterparts.
Also, the appreciation of cryptocurrencies is growing faster among women, with crypto being the second most widely female-owned asset class.
