Celebrating International Women’s Day: Meet The Female Leaders At The Forefront Of Blockchain And Web3 Innovation
In Brief
These visionary women are shaping the future of Web3 and blockchain by leading in finance, venture, infrastructure, legal, and marketing, driving innovation, inclusion, and the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency and digital assets.
The blockchain and Web3 industry continues to expand, and with them, a growing number of visionary women are shaping its future. These female leaders, among many other inspiring examples, bring expertise across finance, venture capital, infrastructure, marketing, and legal counsel, helping projects scale securely, grow sustainably, and navigate complex regulatory landscapes. From building institutional-grade custody solutions to leading Web3 marketing and product strategy, these women are driving innovation, promoting inclusion, and setting new standards for the industry. Here, we highlight some of the most influential women whose work is redefining how blockchain and cryptocurrency projects are built and adopted.
Kathleen Wrynn
Kathleen leads Invesco’s global digital-assets strategy, focusing on tokenization, crypto-linked products, and integrating blockchain use cases into traditional asset management. With a career spanning operations, product, and regulatory-focused roles, she was hired into a cross-border leadership post to shepherd Invesco’s expansion in digital securities and custodial offerings. She champions practical tokenization pilots and liaises with institutional partners and regulators to design compliant product wrappers that bridge legacy finance and Web3. Her public commentary and speaking appearances emphasize robust governance, operational controls, and market infrastructure as prerequisites for wider institutional adoption.
Gracy Chen
Gracy Chen is the CEO of Bitget, a global crypto exchange and Web3 company, after joining as Managing Director in 2022 and being promoted to CEO in May 2024. A former TV host turned entrepreneur and investor, she brings 10+ years of experience across business management, marketing, and fintech startups—helping steer Bitget’s global expansion, strategic partnerships, and product growth. Gracy has spoken widely on DeFi, inclusion, and exchange strategy, and played a visible role in high-profile partnerships and community programs that boosted Bitget’s international footprint. She advocates for wider mainstream adoption and diversity within the crypto industry.
Ciara Sun
Ciara is the founder and general partner of C² Ventures, a VC that invests at the intersection of crypto, tokenization and emerging markets. Before launching her fund she held leadership roles at major exchanges and trading firms, building institutional relationships and product offerings across APAC and beyond. Her work emphasizes early-stage deal sourcing, cross-border go-to-market strategies, and supporting founders on token economics and regulatory navigation. An active conference speaker and community connector, she leverages experience from trading, exchange operations, and venture to back founders scaling infrastructure, marketplaces, and financial-rail innovations.
Cecilia Hsueh
Cecilia is a senior strategy executive at MEXC (formerly cited as CSO/CBO roles), known for founding and leading projects in Layer-2 scaling and exchange products. As a former founder and CEO of MorphLayer and an executive at other exchange-related ventures, she blends product, engineering, and business strategy to help exchanges and L2 ecosystems scale securely. Cecilia focuses on interoperability, developer onboarding, and token-driven incentives, advocating technical approaches (like optimistic + ZK hybrids) that improve throughput while preserving decentralization. She’s a visible commentator on crypto strategy and ecosystem design.
Kristal Gruevski
Kristal is a lawyer-turned-founder serving as General Counsel at Zivoe, where she shapes legal, compliance, and fundraising strategy for consumer-focused crypto finance products. With a background in business law and experience advising fintech and lending startups, she combines regulatory know-how with product-focused counsel to help early-stage teams navigate capital raises, token structures, and licensing considerations. Kristal is also active in community and investor circles, advising on governance frameworks and risk management as projects scale. Her practical legal approach helps projects balance innovation with investor protection and compliance.
Janet Adams
Janet serves as Chief Operating Officer at SingularityNET, focusing on operationalizing decentralized AI, partnerships, and the project’s community-driven accelerator programs. She combines a deep interest in decentralized governance and AI ethics with hands-on leadership over technology operations, payments, and strategic alliances. Janet advocates for democratizing access to advanced AI through open-source tooling and token-enabled funding mechanisms while working to ensure transparency, safety, and equitable participation. Her public speaking and writing emphasize responsible decentralisation of AI and the need for community-centered funding models that align incentives across stakeholders.
Yan Ma
Yan is an Executive Director at Spartan Group, an advisory and investment firm specializing in blockchain projects and Asia-Pacific market expansion. She leads due diligence, structuring and fundraising efforts for crypto and Web3 clients, helping teams refine token economics and market-entry strategies. A Harvard-educated operator based in Singapore, Yan blends capital markets insight with on-the-ground regional knowledge to support both institutional investors and startups. Her role often involves crafting strategic partnerships, investor introductions, and ecosystem reports that guide venture and treasury decisions across the region.
Nkiru Uwaje
Nkiru is Co-Founder and COO of MANSA, a payments and liquidity platform focused on reducing pre-funding and liquidity frictions for cross-border payouts in emerging markets. With prior roles across Dell Technologies, SWIFT, Finastra and Boomi, she built GTM, partnerships, and program leadership experience that she now applies to scaling stablecoin rails and settlement networks for remittances and corporate payouts. Recognized on industry lists for women in Web3 and AI, she’s led MANSA’s partnerships and fundraising while advocating pragmatic regulatory engagement to enable faster, cheaper, and more inclusive cross-border financial flows.
Mary Pedler
Mary founded INPUT Global, a metrics-first communications agency that helps Web3 and tech firms build measurable media, events, and community programs. Over eight years she’s supported 150+ ventures with PR strategies, narrative development, and event moderation—leveraging a wide network of journalists and influencers across Europe, the Middle East and beyond. Based in Dubai, Mary emphasizes data-driven storytelling, pipeline generation through strategic media placements, and long-term brand building for startups navigating regulatory uncertainty and investor scrutiny. She also mentors founders on messaging that resonates with both mainstream and crypto-native audiences.
”The market moves extremely fast. If you are building in the emerging tech space, you need to adapt quickly. Being flexible and willing to take risks gives you a real advantage – especially when you’re operating in startup mode,” Mary shared with MPost.
Commenting on the factors most important for effective leadership in the industry, she shared an insight – “believing in people and avoiding micromanagement.”
Clarisse Hagège
Clarisse co-founded and leads Dfns, a cloud-native custody and wallet-infrastructure firm that builds secure, compliance-friendly key management for fintechs, banks and Web3 platforms. Trained in finance and economics (Sorbonne, Sciences Po, Dauphine), she spent a decade in investment banking and corporate treasury before founding Dfns in 2020 to tackle the operational and security gaps around institutional crypto custody. Beyond running product and go-to-market, Clarisse is active in industry governance — serving with the MPC Alliance, mentoring at Techstars Web3 Launchpad and advising startups at Station F — pushing for safer, standards-based wallet infrastructure across the ecosystem.
Lisa Loud
Lisa Loud — Serves as Head of Product at Ubuntu Tribe, bringing decades of technology and fintech experience from roles at Apple and PayPal to lead product strategy for tokenized precious-metal offerings. She has helped shape Ubuntu Tribe’s GIFT (Gold International Fungible Token) initiative, emphasizing compliance, 1:1 redeemability and practical tokenization to broaden financial access—particularly across Southeast Asia—while positioning regulatory clarity and operational controls as competitive advantages. Loud is an active industry speaker and advisor, known for translating institutional discipline into Web3 product design and for advocating privacy, redeemability and user protection in asset-backed token launches; her recent public appearances include panels and interviews at major industry events where she outlined the project’s roadmap for gold and silver tokenization.
Lisa Loud has gained recognition for her contributions to the sector and is considered a prominent figure in the fintech community. She was also included on a list of influential women attending Davos, highlighting her role in shaping conversations around digital assets, tokenization, and the future of financial infrastructure.
“AI and crypto provide incredible opportunity along with some unique risks. In a corporate environment, it’s hard to move quickly—you’ll hit your head against the shatterproof glass of bureaucracy and tradition. In emerging industries, you can break through—but it may cut you! I count those scars as badges of honour,” said Lisa to MPost.
“With the current pace of change, there is no way to avoid integrating innovation into our processes and leadership—we must innovate or stagnate. To manage risk, leaders need to spend at least 25% of their time learning and evaluating new tools based on AI, so that we can guide our teams into safe and effective ways of leveraging these powerful tools,” she added.
Commenting on the most important factors for effective leadership, she noted, “The most important quality a leader can possess in today’s changing times is trust. A leader who inspires trust will foster resilience and adaptability in their teams and their communities, giving them the strongest possible qualities to counter risk in an innovative environment.”
Women across asset management, venture, infrastructure and marketing continue to steer Web3 from technical experiments toward resilient, user-facing products — bringing operational rigor, regulatory fluency and growth playbooks that help the industry scale responsibly.
Disclaimer
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About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
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Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
