Hello welcome Talisha, I’m Natassja from Diversity in Blockchain. Thank you for coming on with us today for the first ChainChat! What we want to do is make a chain of strange questions that sandwich all of the on-topic questions and as you’re the first one, I’m going to start the chain and ask you, what was the last thing you bought?

Bought? Oh, goodness. Well, since I’m moving I’m buying everything brand new so the whole house! Bedroom sets, furniture, food, everything that you can think of to relocate.

Starting afresh? Brilliant. And at the end, I’m going to ask you to come up with a random question for the next person that hopefully comes along. OK, so what is it you do, Talisha?

I work as a business product advisor for a healthcare company and I’m also a consultant, a blockchain consultant.

You might be able to help us out, then! Did you kind of fall into blockchain, or was it something you worked towards?

I have a computer science background and also an MBA. I’ve been in healthcare for about 13 years, in health tech during that time, I’ve also been in IT for 25 years so it’s been a long haul of just doing different things I fell into, I would say, health tech in a sense that it’s been a passion of mine. But when I started working for an EHR company, which is Electronic Health Records, it kind of just spawned into this whole career path that I find myself on now.

So would you say what first got you into blockchain was because of the natural way that the tech is going?

It was interesting because I heard about cryptocurrency first, as most people had, probably back in 2016, but it didn’t really catch my attention. Then in 2017, I was like, OK, I now need to know what’s powering this thing that everybody keeps talking about. As a tech person I always need to know what is the actual backend part of things rather than the application. That’s when I really kind of delved into what is blockchain? From there, it just kind of spiraled. You go down the rabbit hole, and while crypto was the key impetus it was truly that infrastructure that kind of stuck with me and that’s when I wanted to see what the applications could be, beyond just cryptocurrency.

So for healthcare, can you see that there will be a future with blockchain?

Most definitely. Health tech and blockchain go hand in hand and that’s my whole entire thing, I spend most of my time in that area, specifically how we implement those solutions that are coming from this technology.

Exciting then. What challenges have you found on the way to learning more about blockchain, or doing more in general?

I think there’s a large amount of information that’s available, when I came into this space I was hunting around for information, but it’s like, what can you trust? Where are those resources that are consistent, that give you the information that you’re looking for and that are not hype-centric; one day saying this and the next day the total opposite? So that was one of the biggest challenges coming into this space. I remedied that, I began to make that aggregator for myself, and be that for other people as well. So I actually formed a group to help people synergize that information, and I consistently pushed that out with regard to their questions and concerns so everything was more like a symbiotic relationship. I know I had questions, I took the other people’s questions and I put them together. I would answer those, each and every day since 2018. I have a Discord channel specifically for that purpose.

It’s on Discord you say? What’s the name?

It’s called Black Blockchain Consultant. A group of us came together and wanted to find out where we fit. My community is always left behind in any of the technological advancements, we’re the last people to get into it so we wanted to be not only first, but also to be well educated, to understand what was coming to us, how to utilize that, how to upskill ourselves, where did we fit in, and then really understand that not everybody is going to be a coder, tech is not always about coding, but we’re all users and consumers, so we really needed that kind of How does this impact me? What’s in it for me? And so I answered those questions.

Have you had a good uptake?

Yes! 

Another resource to look out for then. This is what we are hoping to do with ChainChat, bring all of the resources that are out there together in a digestible format.

We need more of that because we all come from very different backgrounds and we all have different focus points, but you do need that safe space to ask questions like I really just don’t understand what this is. I found it, but I don’t know what it is… Help me!

Exactly. All of the buzzwords that come up, I’m like Who can I ask?

The vocabulary! It’s learning a brand new language, and I’m a stickler, very much about the semantics. I tell people all the time to stop throwing words around. Like at the very beginning Crypto and Blockchain being synonymous, and like, they’re very different things! It’s ongoing language processing as I say, it needs to be specific.

You’re right. Who was your mentor or guide, or who could you ask your questions to?

We had a group that came together, it was definitely a collective effort. We were leading our own way. Somebody has to forge that path and I was willing to do that. I spent a lot of time double and triple-checking facts, finding those resources, and utilizing the things that I thought were important. Then having a collective conversation so it wasn’t just my voice. I was like, OK, this is what I’ve found, what do you think about this? What can we add? Or what do we need to supplement with? It definitely became a group effort to get ahead.

Well done. With your main job, what is the diversity situation there?

We are a large global company so there’s quite a bit of diversity in myriad ways throughout each department. Healthcare is one of those kind of places. It impacts all of us, we are all patients. 

What practical ways do you think startups or other businesses away from healthcare can push diversity?

I think you have to look at what your consumer base is. You need to be able to address certain issues and if you don’t have the representation behind it, that’s where you really need to look at your diversity situation. We need to see who we are. Most problems are not solved from a monolithic standpoint. That blind, thinking about it in one way, that doesn’t really serve anybody. It doesn’t really help you when you’re all of one mind — you do have to work and operate that way but you can’t think that way. And diversity for me is always, as a black female, incorporated in everything I do, because I do work in a very male-dominated field, and it’s been that way for the past 25 years. I’ve very much been the only one in any workforce, and I continue to find myself in that situation even in the blockchain space.

Obviously don’t answer if you don’t feel comfortable but have you had any issues as a black woman in a male-dominant space that you’ve had to push through?

All the time. There’s always that having to double and triple explain things, you have your own ideas usurped by somebody else constantly, a lack of trust, so I come in and do my job and they’re just like Are you sure you can do it? I’m like, I’ve been here a long time, I can do this. Even with new technologies, it’s still the same. We still have, I would say, no experts in the field but there are some levels. I’ve been here since 2017, it’s not like I just got here yesterday. People need to make that assessment of who we’re talking to and who the receptive people are. I don’t need to spend my time convincing anybody, I just do what I need to do and if you’re on board that’s great, if not, you’ll get it later.

Do you think your attitude has a lot to do with how you tackle those situations?

Most definitely, yes. I’m not here campaigning, I’m a 50 year-old woman in this space, I’ve been here, I’ve done, got the postcard. If you want to listen to me, great. If you don’t, well, you’ll see me.

You don’t look 50 by the way! One of the questions was going to be how do you explain DeFi to an alien. But would there be a health equivalent? Like DeHe or something?

Well, decentralized finance takes care of everything. We all exchange goods and services, it’s just how we do it. So I say, if i can push a button and give you what you need and you can do the same for me, that’s all you need to know. You don’t need to know the tech if you’re not in tech. Most people get too caught up in the tech, people want to know how it works. I can explain WiFi to you, you’d probably glaze over and be like OK, that’s great. You just want the password. I’ll just give you the password and let you do whatever it is you want to do on the internet! That’s what DeFi is — I just get you what you want and it’s really quick and easy.

What do you wish you had known sooner?

I wish I would have known how this would have gone, how it was going to evolve. I really wish I had tapped in a little earlier when I very first heard about it, that way I could have been even farther along than I am now.

I’d say the same. Any predictions about the future of NFTs? Any utility for NFTs in healthcare?

Most definitely. I think this is where most people forget that the technology has many applications and NFTs are the oldest use case of blockchain, it’s the reason why it exists.

You had to have a way to identify the providence of these digital assets that you’re adding to the blockchain. So, it’s as old as it gets. We’re seeing the hype of it right now because of who is using it, but the real practical and pragmatic use cases are such things as your medical records. Credentialing, all the things that we use every single day that are repetitive, that most people are mindless about. You need the safety, the security, and that resendability. It needs to be a bilateral exchange. You don’t need to always give your health records to everybody, for an extended period of time you just need them to do what they need to do, then get them back. We really need to be in control of our healthcare much more succinctly too. Here in the US, we have legislation giving us real-time access. If you have access, that’s one thing, but what do you do with it when you get it? Where do you put it? You’re not gonna carry it on your phone, you’re not gonna carry your laptop with you every time you go to an appointment. So this is where this kind of technology really does enhance the way we do what we need to do. NFTs are a great application for that.

What else have I got for you? Did I ask you your predictions about where this technology can go?

I definitely think we are going to see the proliferation of NFTs from beyond the arts and entertainment. It’s a great start because that’s easily digestible, most people understand the notion of I want something. I want the collectible, I want to save my ticket, that makes sense. But I do think that much more pragmatic and practical applications will be seen, and referring back to that WiFi thing, you’ll just use it because it’s easier, you won’t really know that this is my NFT because it’s not going to be a Bored Ape, it’s not going to be pixelization of something. It’s just going to be the thing that you need to utilize to pay the bill, to see the doctor, and all of those things in between. I think that’s what we’ll see in the next 5-10 years. 

I think that’s great for today! But I would like you to ask a random question for our next ChainChatter without knowing who it is.

OK, I want to know if the next ChainChatter is Team iPhone or Team Android.

Alright! Which one are you?

I am Team Apple all the way!

I’m Team Android! Brilliant, perfect, thank you very much for joining us!

You’re welcome, have a great day!