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Women in Fintech: No gender gap at blockchain success story

Sphere Identity CEO Katherine Noall talks about pioneering new technology and the opportunities for all in the blockchain sector.

If the finance industry is notorious for its lad culture and the tech industry is dominated by males then an industry at the intersection, Fintech, might be an awkward place for a woman.

As a female CEO across two emerging tech industries – blockchain and digital identity – Katherine Noall can be considered a pioneer.

She came to the blockchain industry from advising traditional tech companies and realised the potential of the technology to reduce transaction times in global payments.

Noall has built a deep understanding of the technology architecture behind blockchain, even creating a course on blockchain applications which she taught for two years at RMIT in Melbourne. Seeing a gap in the market between global commerce and the need for more transparency in trade she joined Sphere Identity as CEO in 2017, where she has steered the company to its current position as a leading light in the development of commercial and personal digital identity solutions.

What is digital identity?

Digital identity is part of the UN’s 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development which are aimed at closing the social inequality gap for the world’s estimated 1 billion undocumented people. For the world’s poorest people not having any formal ID such as a passport precludes them from the basics of life such as healthcare, bank accounts, education and government assistance.

Sphere Identity is a decentralized application, or Dapp, which sets it apart from other digital portals such as a Facebook or Twitter account, or government logins, in that users can store passports, drivers licences or utility bills in one place without having to trust that a central player won’t abuse or sell your data – the user remains in control of their information.

Male dominant industry

It is estimated that between 1-5% of bitcoin investors are female so it unsurprising that the blockchain industry is male-dominated. Cryptography, securing messages through computer code, is the core skill at the heart of the technology which is the most demanding subset in technology. As only 6.5% of general developers are female, the number of women in this subset is negligible.

However, Sphere Identity has managed to avoid that cliche – 48% of its employees are female and not by token selection either. “We have chosen our staff based on their skills and not with any male-female ratio in mind,” says Noall.

Sphere’s chief technology officer was this week nominated as a finalist at Cisco’s Women in IT Awards in Melbourne for the Rising Star Award. The Sphere app has also been submitted for consideration by the World Bank for its Mission Billion Challenge to bring formal identity to the world’s undocumented.

Future skills

The cryptic nature of this technology doesn’t necessarily preclude people from a non-technical background getting into it and Katherine sees new skill sets and roles opening up as it develops.

“Two years ago I would have said you have to be a programmer to enter the industry but now there are opportunities across all sections of an organisation from marketing to finance. However, there is still a great advantage to becoming as technical as possible even if you’re applying for a non-technical role.”

As the focus moves from developing the core technology stack to developing applications on top, Noall expects to see a more diverse range of skills and genders coming into blockchain companies. “The most exciting part of this industry is that we get to use a brand new technology and create applications that have never before existed,” she says.


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