The company values of Consensys reflect those of the technology it promotes: decentralization, transparency and openness. Amanda Gutterman, chief marketing officer at Consensys, spoke about the way blockchain is transforming traditional modes of leadership.

Before joining Consensys, Gutterman founded Slant, a publishing platform that sought to elevate crowdsourced news and paid freelance writers 70 percent of the ad revenue on their articles. She also previously served as special projects editor at The Huffington Post, working closely with Editor-in-Chief Ariana Huffington. In her current position at Consensys, Gutterman spreads awareness of the decentralized cryptocurrency platform Ethereum and blockchain to a global audience and promotes adoption of decentralized applications.

As part of her mission to drive the adoption of blockchain, Gutterman spends a lot of time explaining what it actually is. If you were to describe blockchain to a 4-year-old, Gutterman said, you would say "it's sort of like a magic piece of paper" that you and all your friends have. Once something is written on one paper, it shows up on everybody's paper and cannot be deleted or copied. Each piece of paper is a "block" of data, and the cryptography connecting everyone's pieces of paper is the "chain."

Amanda Gutterman Courtesy of ConsenSys

The most important aspect of blockchain is its decentralization of power and information. Gutterman drew a parallel between blockchain's transparency of information with Consensys' flat company organization. "A lot of top down, hierarchical, command and control organizations share information on a need-to-know basis," she said. "We share information very openly and fluidly."

As a leader within an organization that espouses a certain wariness of hierarchy, Gutterman has found that trust, accountability and transparency are key characteristics for 21st century leadership. She identified leadership not as a title or a position, but rather as a "set of actions" that include taking responsibility for outcomes and demonstrating trust in one's employees. "If you treat people like you trust them, then they'll behave in ways that are trustworthy," Gutterman said. "If you treat people like you don't trust them, then they're going to behave in ways that are untrustworthy."