Blockchain enthusiasts are constantly bombarded with new network upgrades, business project releases and technical analyses. Inspired by the “Humans of New York” project, we are introducing “Humans of Blockchain”; an initiative to highlight the human side of the industry and showcase blockchain professionals around the world.
The goal is to get to know the people pushing blockchain forward better and understand them at a personal level. If there is a specific blockchain figure you would like us to cover or have any questions you would like us to ask, please get it touch.
Humans of Blockchain: Sarah Nabaa
Sarah Nabaa – VeChain VP SE Asia and Australasia
Follow @Sarah_Nabaa
To kickoff the series, we had the privilege to speak to Sarah Nabaa, VeChain’s Vice-President of SE Asia & Australasia. She is primarily responsible for business development and identifying key technology partners in the supply chain, IoT, provenance and agritechnology fields.
According to a LongHash survey on 100 blockchain startups, women only account for 14.5% of employees and 7% of managers. This interview was a unique chance for us to understand what it means to be a female professional in a male-dominated blockchain space.
Tell us about yourself and how you got into blockchain.
I graduated with an EEE Degree but I never wanted to be an engineer. Instead, I wanted very badly to be a proprietary trader, which I did at 24.
At 25, I saved up some money, bootstrapped, started an e-commerce business with my best friend, sold it at 31 and decided I wanted to work in business development for a technology start-up.
I first learnt about the Ethereum Blockchain at a property-technology start-up back in January 2017 where the CTO wanted to introduce blockchain for many reasons:
1) a property maintenance logbook where all home and repair services hired by homeowners on his platform had proof of records maintained on the blockchain
2) use of smart contracts for ownership transfer and payment for rentals
I had my first interview with Sunny and Jay in May 2017 through David Fowler from PwC Venture Hub. Interestingly, Jay came back with an offer in Oct 2017 asking me if I was able to start in November as employee #1 in Singapore. It was very surreal and exciting, I’ve not looked back since and I am amazed how fast time has flown by when work is enjoyable.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Post COVID19 : Have to work remotely since Singapore entered circuit breaker from 03 April – 01 June
Catching up on my emails, scheduling conference calls with existing customers, new inbounds & channel partners, working on potential proposals, drafting agreements with our legal counsel and networking on LinkedIn. One minute we are speaking to someone in luxury, the next someone in fish farming. Clients can range from IoT to energy, which makes my job interesting as I learn so much about the various industries.
How would you explain blockchain and VeChain to a 10 years old?
I personally like this video but if YouTube explainer videos are not allowed, here’s my analogy for a 10 yr old.
A football game is broadcasted before a full stadium and satellite TV. Imagine if everyone had a pen and a notebook to note down who scored during the game. For noting the sequence of goals correctly, all witnesses will earn a prize.
Changing the sequence of who scored during the game or changing the outcome is impossible as this would require getting all spectators in the stadium and people who watched it from home to agree. But if there was no “live” telecast, and only 4 people were in the audience, it would be a lot easier to bribe these 4 witnesses to change the sequence in the order I want.
Blockchain is like the first scenario, it is a digital record of events recorded in a chronological order by a network of witnesses globally. Each witness has a copy and every event bears a digital thumbprint which we call a unique ID. Any change in the records will fire off alarms as it will be noticed by the network of witnesses and rejected.
There are many blockchain networks in the world and VeChain’s network is maintained by 101 companies as witnesses, it also has many cool features which make it easy for enterprise companies to integrate this technology into existing processes. It is named after Thor, the God of Lightning as it is lightning fast and strong.
What excites you the most about VeChain and the blockchain sector and what are the biggest obstacles?
“VeChain is fast gaining popularity for its accomplishments and notable partnerships worldwide. I know we are on the right track as we are beginning to see other protocols and consultancies preaching about the benefits of using public blockchain and adopting similar consensus mechanisms. At the same time, our pipelines are growing in all regions across various industries.”
I am thankful our global team is professional and has DNV GL and PwC as strategic partners because that helps a lot. Not to mention our work with other clients in automotive, fashion, logistics, agri and luxury stands firm and true as our testimonials.
As far as obstacles go, there is still a big gap between enterprises’ understanding of blockchain technology and how it can be applied to their business. Beyond real world use-cases, ROI, value, and additional benefits of using the technology needs to be addressed and communicated more effectively.
Another obstacle I see is that compared to other protocols, I hope to see more developers building on VeChain. Our dev team has introduced many new features which makes it easy and it’s a real pity not to see our community taking advantage of them and building actively.
VeChainThor blockchain is a global protocol network with satellite offices all around the world, and the team should be given more credit for the brilliant products our developers have created as it already has gained a proven track record in working in various industries.
What traits allow your team to succeed?
Have you met Sunny? 😀
I am sure you will agree he is one person who inspires all of us to be a little more like him. We try to emulate not only his dressing, his professionalism, foresight and of course, humility.
What surprised you the most about working in the blockchain industry?
I spent most of 2019 explaining what is blockchain technology in most meetings. I do feel there is a huge gap between people who understand blockchain and people who do not. There is always a tendency to mistake cryptocurrency for blockchain technology but I feel we have a long way to go in terms of educating the masses.
There was one point in time where blockchain was termed as a hype, and it sure as hell made IoT very sexy again. We would get a lot of leads asking to come up with comprehensive solutions and this is why we started building an approved vendor network, looking out for potential vendors who can provide their solutions to our clients.
I was also surprised at the number of companies who were asking for a form of investment or payment for them to use VeChain which was really uncalled for as it is not in our interest to invest in the companies that utilise our blockchain protocol.
What do you think are the most common misconceptions about women in blockchain? Have they affected you in any way?
“I think the common misconceptions is that women are not seen as technology-savvy and people tend to discredit the technology knowledge that women know… They’d rather hear it from a male, which is why I’ll always have my project manager to go to meetings with me and have them answer their technology questions even though I know the answers to them.”
It’s just the way the world works and I’ll rather work with that bias to our advantage by having my project manager always on standby and answer questions rather than lose a deal.
How can we improve gender diversity in the sector?
Teach girls programming and coding from a young age to build up a talent pool on the supply side. Companies could work to having some kind of ratio as a benchmark and hire more women in management too.
Who is your biggest inspiration and why?
In the Crypto space – Meltem Demirrors. I know she is all about Tezos and Bitcoin but she is changing investor minds about cryptocurrencies and I personally think payments and identity are two areas where we will see blockchain being a huge disruptor.
In the technology space – hands down, Bill Gates for his work at Microsoft, his ferocious appetite for reading and his philanthropic work.
Any guilty pleasures?
During the partial lockdown at home, I found learning how to dance a TikTok challenge very entertaining. It made me and my friends laugh a lot which I thought was important during the lockdown.
What are your hobbies?
I’ve started to play golf with my husband every weekend since Jan 2019. It allows me to really disconnect and focus on my swings. Unfortunately, my short game is really bad at the moment.
What would be your superpower?
My superpower is being irritatingly sunshiny and positive all the time. If I was a SuperHero, I would love to be the female version of Tony Stark – incredibly intelligent engineer who built his own super power – Iron man and is still human at heart.
A fun fact about you?
I was a very sporty person back in school. I was captain of my school Netball teams from elementary to high school and was enrolled into the cross country team at junior college because I was good enough to represent my school. School and sports played a major part in building who I am today.
Before you go… Do you have a favourite quote or meme?
Thanks for reading the first article in our Humans of Blockchain series. Please comment on Twitter to let us know which people you would like to see highlighted next!
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