As the IOTA Foundation has grown, so has its reach. As many know, we at the Foundation haven’t placed much precedence on marketing and advertising. Instead, over the last few years, we focused on funneling our resources to fulfilling the vision to create a core technology that is fee-less, scalable, modular, and impactful.

With this in mind, we are happy to announce that we will henceforth be rectifying our lack of outreach, starting with the United States and Canada. Over the last few months, we have been building our strategy on how to approach enhanced efforts in these regions.

These efforts will be led by Mathew Yarger with his transition to Public Sector Product Owner for North America as part of the Social Impact and Regulatory Affairs team, and the on-boarding of Dan Simerman as Head of Financial Relations.

Mathew will be closely coordinating North American growth with Dan, and combined they will be addressing the North American market with intense focus, while taking guidance from and coordinating directly with the executive team, as well as our US based advisors with presences in Chicago, Calgary, Los Angeles, Orlando and more.

They will also be accompanied by the addition of our new Advisor, Jon Comer, who will initially be leading outreach efforts in the Los Angeles region and coordinating directly with Mathew and Dan with a focus on the private sector.

Already present in Europe & Southeast Asia

We have already established a substantial presence in Europe, and have shown the depth of that presence with recent announcements such as co-founding the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) with our very own Julie Maupin holding the seat of Chairman of the Board working hand in hand with the European Commission.

We have also started to build a more pronounced presence in Southeast Asia with our work in Taipei. We have made great progress in coordinating with community organizations and local regulators. We’ve developed multiple large-scale cross border pilots and partnerships in every focal industry; whether that be supply chain, eHealth, energy, mobility, or smart cities.

Up until this point we have built a team that has shown great strengths, and has been internally focused on streamlining processes within the Foundation regarding both management and development efforts.

A team that is passionate about fulfilling our vision has been established, and more importantly highly capable of making it a reality. We have seen our team grow organically to over 100 employees located in over 20 countries.

Wherever connected systems have shown a weakness that could use the capabilities of a scalable, fee-less, immutable data management protocol to enhance security, capabilities, collaboration, and make an impact, we have been there.

There has been resounding feedback and fast, agile, focused development as a result of that feedback helping us to strengthen the core capabilities of the IOTA protocol.

The work of the Foundation has been dynamic and fruitful, and the future is looking very bright for the IOTA protocol to fulfill the promises of what blockchain technologies could some day accomplish.

Reaching outward

With the growth of the core technologies, our focus has needed to start transitioning outward. This can be seen through the open sourcing of every aspect of the IOTA protocol with the most recent open release of Compass, our Open Source Coordinator, and its transition to the mainnet.

It can also be seen through our increased commitment to transparency, by the transition of our development and research focused communications to operate within complete view of our community on Discord.

However, we are now starting to tackle our lack of presence in other regions, and in particular North America. However, it’s important to note, that North America is the starting point, but not exclusive to this expansion. Efforts are already underway for further developments to occur in Central and South America. The strategies there will align with the lessons learned from expansion in North America, and will create a cohesive push for developments throughout the Americas as a whole.

To mark our enhanced focus on growth in North America, Co-Founder Dominik Schiener will be traveling through initial focal regions in the US to include New York, Austin, Chicago, and Orlando over the next month.

There are three events that have been established for the local community to come, interact with Dominik and local representatives of the IOTA Foundation, and learn about recent progress the Foundation has made, as well as focal projects that have been in the works in each of the three areas.

More information can be found on these three events through the following meetup links below. We hope that we will see you there, and look forward to the progress we’ll be making in North America with our community and growing network of public and private sector partners.

IOTA NYC, 26 April 2019: https://www.meetup.com/BeyondBlockchainNYC/events/260319047/ IOTA Austin, 29 April 2019: https://www.meetup.com/IOTA-Austin-Beyond-Blockchain/events/260550749/ IOTA Chicago, 2 May 2019: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/Chicago-IOTA-Meetup/events/260379979/

Mathew will be centrally located in Austin, Texas and focus on regulatory outreach, advising policy makers, managing public sector products and partnerships, and leading technical development of pilots impacting the social impact priorities of making the IOTA protocol tangible, and directly impactful to everyone it touches.

Dan will be centrally located in New York and focus on financial relations where he will be coordinating with financial officials and organizations, and integrating the IOTA protocol into financial use cases with fervor.

How do I get in touch with the IOTA Foundation?

Combined this establishes the initial priorities of the IOTA Foundation to work with regulators, policymakers, and financial institutions to make our technology impactful to everyday use cases through enhanced collaboration. It also gives the community and interested parties a direct point of contact to reach out to.

If you are located in the US or Canada, and have a project you’re building on the IOTA protocol, or want to learn more about IOTA and get your organization directly involved with the Foundation, please reach out to Mathew at Mathew.Yarger@iota.org, Dan at Dan.Simerman@iota.org, or Jon at Jon.Comer@ext.iota.org to get started.

If you’d like to join the team, there are currently multiple positions open that can be filled in the US and Canada including opportunities for a Public Relations Manager, Graphic Designers, Internships, Developers and Researchers that can be applied for via our job board here:

https://iota.bamboohr.com/jobs/