About

Blockchain by Women was born to create awareness, educate and connect people involved in this rocketing space. The focus is not a single meetup but a movement in the blockchain field to break down barriers and increase diversity. We want to build a community, support a network that shares knowledge, resources, the latest trends and foster relationships that lead to lasting companies. A community that showcases some of the amazing work and success stories women as well as men in this industry have created and achieved. A community that leads and empowers.

Karen Hsu

Founder, Blockchain by Women

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, BlockchainIntel

I have spent decades working in software, and I helped companies
around the world move their data around and analyze it. What I found was how inefficient these organizations were with data and why they could charge so much for moving funds or goods. I saw these once powerful, highly centralized organizations like SWIFT were waning in the early 2000s. Others collapsed soon after. After first learning about the blockchain, I fell down a rabbit hole. I saw how multiple industries can be transformed. The belief in that transformation has led me to work at one of the first blockchain infrastructure companies and advise on the boards of others.

With a passion for finding and scaling product/market fit, I love to
learn and learn by doing. I’ve been fortunate to work with and support thousands of companies who have pioneered these early days of the blockchain. Looking forward to progressing on this journey with you.

My day job is CEO and Founder of BlockchainIntel. With over 20 years of experience in technology companies, I was previously Chief Revenue Officer at BlockCypher. I am co-inventor of 5 patents and worked in a variety of engineering, marketing and sales roles to bring new products to market. In addition to helping companies build blockchain applications, I have led Data Integration, Business Intelligence, and CRM teams at companies including IBM, Siebel Systems, and Informatica. I have also worked closely with standards organizations such as SWIFT, NACHA and ACORD. As an undergraduate at Stanford University in the engineering department, I co-founded BASES, one of the largest student run organizations at Stanford today dedicated to entrepreneurship.

Founding Team members

Marzanne DeLoof

I was introduced to Bitcoin early in 2017 and started investing small amounts in various exchanges to follow and learn the market. Through osmosis learning about more use cases, reading Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper, and understating the power of the technology behind Bitcoin I quickly realized that distributed ledger technology resolves one of our biggest concerns with technology – TRUST. With this realization, I joined a rapidly growing Blockchain based startup to take advantage of these world-changing developments.

Early in my career, I worked in financial auditing and later led Customer Success with a SaaS platform company which was acquired. With this experience, I immediately grasped and appreciated some of the most important features blockchain technology brings: transparency, immutability, and auditability. I believe in the near future we will be using software with blockchain and smart contract technology without even realizing it.

Being born and raised in South Africa, a 1st world country on a 3rd world continent, I appreciate the social impact that blockchain brings to underserved and developing markets. With no prerequisites or arbitrary limits, Blockchain technology brings democratization to lower income and underserved markets.

I enjoy building early-stage technology companies to scale and collaborating with others in the ecosystem.

Marina wolters

I am the Co-Producer of the Global Blockchain Forum - a successful Investor and Enterprise Blockchain community event that gathered 6,000 attendees across 3 forums in Santa Clara, San Francisco, and Seoul, Korea. 

Before that, I led FinTech and Blockchain practice at innovation consultancy, SVIC, working with Bradesco, Canada Payments, and Toyota on blockchain initiatives. Prior to that I headed Business Development and Product Strategy at a European hyper-growth payments startup, ECommPay.

I am a passionate advocate for women in blockchain and diversity.