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On March 8th, we celebrated the International Women’s Day, a global occasion to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This year’s theme, #EachforEqual championed women forging tech innovations and to commemorate the day, we shared with you an interview with our CEO, Lone Fonss.

We want to continue highlighting our female teammate’s perspectives to inspire others to join Concordium, today we interviewed some of them and here their answers.

How can Concordium help close the gender gap? 💪

Maria Amalia Rojas:

According to the World Bank, 42% of the women do not have access to financial services, and in the Middle East/North Africa region, an estimated 25 million urban women lack equal constitutional and statutory property rights. Concordium will deliver a user-friendly platform that can handle smart contracts, which could give these women access to legal contracts without the need for a middleman. This works especially good in Concordium since we replace anonymity with perfect privacy, allowing women to use the platform knowing that their identity is private but if there was any crime against them authorities would be able to identify the perpetrator.

Through Blockchain projects like Wala, Hiveonline and Women’s Annex thousands of women gain financial independence, and this economical empowerment not only benefits them but their families. Reports show that women invest 90% of their income in their family allowing children to get better nutrition, education and a more secure future. Concordium AG is developing a blockchain for enterprises, able to adapt to limitless use cases, and I have no doubt some of them will facilitate financial and legal accessibility to women, closing the gender gap a little more.

How can Concordium help close the gender gap in the tech industry? 💪

Marianna Rapoport:

This is a complex question, but here are two related ideas that I find relevant: First, some tech companies avoid gender quotas in favor of a system where the hiring standards are uniform across genders, but the company makes an additional hiring effort targeted at the underrepresented groups (e.g. hold a recruiting event at the local university in coordination with the women-in-tech club).

Second, research in psychology suggests that so-called implicit biases can shape how we assess others, even without realizing that is the case. For example, an interviewer might unconsciously conflate confidence with competence. Although the scientific evidence of unconscious-bias training is contested, in part because such training doesn’t help in cases where the bias is conscious, personally, I have found reading about implicit bias useful in uncovering my own assumptions. I believe that such training can be helpful when it comes in combination with other strategies, such as encouraging an inclusive work environment, cultivating ethical behaviour, and being explicit about candidate search criteria.

Maria Amalia Rojas:

Since the moment Concordium hired a female scientist, a female developer, and our current CEO, Concordium created a platform for these women to inspire others. Representation is vital for signaling a sense of belonging, studies have shown that having role models who match race and gender is beneficial for students belonging and increases the participation of those who identify themselves with the role models.

Maria Amalia Rojas

There are a lot of successful women in the blockchain space and the female participation in the industry is increasing exponentially however, you do not see them enough on media and conferences. Concordium has never been shy at celebrating their teammate’s achievements, no matter their race or gender, which facilitates motivation.

Additionally, Concordium’s hiring process is an example for the industry since it does not care about gender or race, but professional skills and ability.

Companies need to implement hiring processes where gender and name are not showcased on the first stage. This ensures that the HR team focuses only on achievements, experience, cognitive ability, personality tests and other elements that assure capacity to perform in the position. I am not talking about filling quotas but hiring people based on their merits and abilities, without gender being a parameter. This is essentially necessary for countries where paternity leave is not mandatory yet. I´ve heard CEOs saying, “we don’t hire women because if they get pregnant we need to provide them maternity leave” and I was asked to take a pregnancy test and answer questions like “do you plan to get married soon” during my first ever work interview, something that my male counterparts have never experienced.

Moreover, let’s remember that diversity ensures a variety of professional skills and creative thinking. And last but not least, women bring more women!

Felicia Flury:

To find and hire more women, Women today have as much potential as men and excellent degrees and enough courage for a successful career.

How did you develop an interest in blockchain technology? 👌

Marianna Rapoport:

In the last years, I have been putting a lot of effort into protecting my online privacy, but have found it increasingly difficult to understand and control how my data is shared with third parties. For example, when I use my credit card, my personal information is indiscriminately shared with and sold to other companies, generating data that can be more valuable to marketers than the item I purchased in the first place, and there’s little I can do about that except switching to cash.

Crypto-currencies have the potential to improve over the status quo in at least two ways. First, they can provide greater transparency, making it explicit to the user what data is being shared, and with whom. Second, they allow for greater control over the sharing mechanism. For example, using zero-knowledge proofs a crypto-currency protocol can certify that a user is old enough to access a service, without revealing the user’s age.

I hope that we will discover and implement more of these privacy-enhancing solutions in the future, and that they will become ubiquitous in our daily lives.

Felicia Flury:

I got the chance to get a foothold at Concordium by chance and am very proud to be part of such a big project from the beginning. I have always been active in the service sector. I have expanded my professional experience by working in a private bank. In the bank, one knows what´s on the sidelines and what goes on so well, but the developments were always in large leaps. I am very interested in the digital world and bringing intelligence to new levels and therefore the blockchain principle has become a fascination to me.

Maria Amalia Rojas:

Funny enough, my interest in blockchain technology developed because of Concordium. As many people out there who are not cryptographers or such, every time I heard the concept of blockchain I immediately thought about cryptocurrencies. It was after I read more about Lone’s work and Concordium’s vision that I realized blockchain’s potential to be adapted to countless use cases!

It excites me to think about all the possibilities this new technology has and the ways it can change how industries work now.

What’s it like being a woman in the tech world? Are there challenges? 👌

Marianna Rapoport:

Just like we would not describe what it is like to be a man in tech, we cannot accurately describe one shared experience that reflects the lived reality of women in tech. That said, I do believe that there are factors (e.g. discouragement, differential treatment, lack of representation) that unnecessarily complicate many women’s and other minorities’ experiences at all stages of getting into STEM fields. In my experience, discussions about these issues often end up with the “nature vs nurture” question. One example is the idea that women are biologically more interested in “people” whereas men are more interested in “things.” I think that such ideas are often used to justify how things stand and attribute the different gender representation in science and engineering positions to innate gender differences. Without going into disputing this idea, I want to recommend neuroscientist Lise Eliot’s book called Pink Brain, Blue Brain. It explores how negligible differences at birth can eventually become significant due to the gender stereotypes enforced by our culture, and the immense adaptability of our brains. I found this fascinating to learn about.

Felicia Flury

I do not judge the situation on the majority of male colleagues. I think it has to do with interest and further development that today’s woman carries in herself. We all know that women have great potential and that they have not only remained housewives in their families, but that just marrying or bringing up children has a great deal of organizational talent. Women simply did not have the opportunity until recently, but through the revolution of the woman many of these ideals have grown. Personally, I have never struggled to gain recognition in the masculine world, as a strong character serves a prestige and performance at the end of the day, making it no different from our masculine enjoyment.

What excites you the most about Concordium?

Marianna:

A friendly work environment where colleagues help each other. I always feel welcome to ask questions and join discussions.

Opportunity to collaborate with academia, and a principled approach to system design and development.

Programming in Haskell is fun!

Maria Amalia:

The ability to handle different real-world business needs. Concordium can adapt to countless use cases and this is really exciting. Due its flexibility I am sure Concordium would be used in industries that we haven’t even considered yet. Automobile, Finances, Health, ID issuers? The list does not end!

Compliance! Concordium replaces anonymity with privacy, allowing identifiable parties to do business in private instead of anonymous parties doing business in public. This gives me a sense of security and trust.

The diversity of the team, we have business leaders, scientists, developers all working in perfect harmony.

Felicia:

The trust in the whole team that all work together on a project behind everything.

That one plans and implements very professional processes

Humanity

The determination, ambition to achieve success together

Many talents and role models in every single position.

Lone: