Here Are The Women Of Color Leading The NFT And Web3 Wave
The Cultural Custodian recently celebrated dozens of African women leading the way when it comes to NFTs and Web3. Hence, we thought to jump on the wave and shout out the women of color worldwide who are also pioneering in this space.
It’s important to celebrate women every day and not just on International Women’s Day.
Deborah Ojengbede is the first name that comes to mind. Deborah amasses a following of 16.6K on social media and is the CEO of Afen Blockchain Group.
The ‘group’ is an NFT project dedicated to developing user-friendly blockchain solutions in real estate, education, arts & entertainment, and decentralized finance.
Before working on the AFEN Group, Deborah was a Business Analyst at Union Bank, where she had been for five years implementing strategies for gathering, reviewing, and analyzing data requirements; delivering data-driven recommendations and reports to EXCOs and stakeholders, and reviewing current processes to improve data accuracy and business efficiency.
The ex-banker was born in Osun State, Nigeria, where she started playing drums in church at age 10 raised $1million for her startup last year.
Emily Yang, aka pplpleasr
Emily Yang, who goes by her pseudonym plpleasr, is one of the world’s major NFT artists and a member of the influential PleasrDAO, a collective of DeFi leaders, early NFT collectors, and digital artists. Yang describes herself as a “multidisciplinary artist with a focus on web3, NFTs, crypto, DAOs, and philanthropy”.
She previously wrote in the Fortune.com blog that Crypto changed her life.”
She said it changed her life “not only because of the money and investing opportunities it exposed me to but also because of a welcoming community of passionate people who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo. I find myself in a unique position, standing at the intersection of DAOs, NFTs, and Defi, and I definitely don’t want to take this attention for granted. I feel a degree of responsibility to spread crypto awareness in a positive and eloquent way.
“My goal of selling NFTs for a living has shifted to seeing how I can use NFTs to innovate and pave new paths. From participating in PleasrDAO to helping crowdfund a documentary about Ethereum to creating the cover of Fortune (!!!), I hope to inspire more creatives to participate in crypto/Web 3.0 with each new collaboration. This is only just the beginning, and there is room for everyone.”
Ariana Waller, aka Ariana The Techie
Ariana Waller is a full-stack software engineer who has been in the blockchain space since 2017. She is the founder of Mueshi, which she describes as a marketplace to buy, sell, and fractionally purchase fine art NFTs. The US-based startup founder is passionate about encouraging more women to consider a career in web3.
Previously speaking to Yahoo, she said her message to women is: “We need you in this space.”
To female founders already in web3, she said: “You may be the only one, but soon there will be many more women building, investing, and creating in this space. Someone needs to hear your specific journey, your specific voice to be inspired to be in this space.”
Iris ten Teije
Iris ten Teije is the co-founder and CEO of Koia. She describes her startup as “a platform for people to buy, trade and collect fractions of iconic assets.”
Koia links NFTs to real-world assets to fictionalize them. She said this is “a big opportunity and where the real use case and value of NFTs and tokenization comes into play.”
Having worked in several early-stage companies, she’s gained experience across many marketing channels and developing go-to-market strategies.
In Hong Kong, she helped grow a fintech company from one to over fifty employees when she left to move to London to set up the European operations of the business. She also recruited, managed, and coached teams of different sizes and helped set team and company goals (OKRs). By the time she left, the company had raised US$15M+ in VC funding from investors such as Visa Ventures and MassMutual Ventures.
