The crypto sector&nbsp;is&nbsp;currently rebuilding trust after the high-profile collapse of US exchange FTX last year and there is increased scrutiny of the industry by regulators around the world. The list is a mix of senior women working at exchanges, investment firms,&nbsp;in regulatory roles, at trade associations and other parts of the institutional sector. As well as their day-to-day jobs, many are involved in efforts to promote digital assets and shape policy through conferences, regulatory committees and industry groups.

Baker-Taylor - Demirors

Teana Baker-Taylor is a well-known voice in the industry. Her day-to-day job is vice-president of policy and regulatory strategy UK &amp; EU at Circle, the issuer of USD coin and euro coin. She is also a&nbsp;non-executive director at trade association CryptoUK, a board member of non-profit education and networking organisation Crypto Connect and a steering committee member of Global Blockchain Convergence, which brings people together to collaborate on blockchain and digital assets. She has also held leadership roles at the Chamber of Digital Commerce, Crypto.com and Binance. Baker-Taylor is a prominent pro-industry lobbyist who has promoted potential and existing use cases of stablecoins to the Treasury Committee, the Crypto and Digital Assets All-Party Parliamentary Group, the European Commission and multiple US congressional committees.

Vice-president of policy and regulatory strategy UK & EU

Harriett Baldwin is the Conservative MP for West Worcestershire and chair of the Treasury Committee, which recently called on the government to regulate crypto in the same way it does the gambling industry. She said in May that bitcoin and ether have “no intrinsic value, huge price volatility and no discernible social good”. This put her at odds with both City minister Andrew Griffith and the Treasury. The Treasury Committee she leads is one of the most influential parliamentary committees and it is currently assessing the potential risks and opportunities of digital assets, including whether they need greater regulation. Baldwin has held several junior ministerial roles since becoming an MP in 2010, including in the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development. Baldwin was a JPMorgan banker for two decades and became head of currency management at its London office in 1998.

Chair

Diana Biggs joined the crypto industry in 2015 as a director at digital assets exchange Uphold. She then moved to Anthemis Group, where she focused on gender lens finance and blockchain technologies, and then to HSBC, where she was latterly global head of innovation for private banking. She spent two years at Valour, first as CEO of the crypto exchange traded product business from launch and then as group chief strategy officer following its acquisition. Last&nbsp;October, Biggs joined crypto venture capital fund 1kx as a partner. The fund, which is backed by Alan Howard and has a portfolio of more than 80 crypto and Web3 companies, is looking to Biggs to help build partnerships with institutions to grow its portfolio projects. Biggs is an associate fellow with Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, where she guest lectures on digital assets&nbsp;and blockchain technology, and a board member of HIVE Switzerland.

Partner

After a 14-year career at interdealer broker ICAP — now TP ICAP — Vicky Crowley took the plunge into crypto in 2019 with a move to startup Founders Bank. The next year, she took the chief operating officer role at one of crypto’s biggest liquidity providers, B2C2. There she also juggled the role of regional lead in Europe until late 2022, when new European chief executive Thomas Restout arrived. Crowley has hired executives from the likes of UBS, Pemberton Asset Management, Morgan Stanley, HSBC and the Bank of England, and has spearheaded a focus on risk management and regulatory compliance — both key touchpoints in the industry after the collapse of FTX. She also represents B2C2 at trade body CryptoUK and is a founding advisory board member of the Crypto and Digital Assets All‑Party Parliamentary Group, a forum for MPs and industry to discuss the sector. Crowley started her career in Ireland as a software analyst, moving&nbsp;to&nbsp;Denmark in 2004 to work for IBM.

Chief operating officer

Meltem Demirors entered the crypto industry relatively early by institutional standards, joining in 2015, as a founding member and vice-president of Digital Currency Group, the conglomerate that owns Grayscale Investments, Genesis and media outlet CoinDesk. In&nbsp;2018, she moved to CoinShares, where she is chief strategy officer. The firm has £2.1bn assets under management, making it Europe’s biggest crypto fund manager. As&nbsp;well as overseeing the firm’s corporate strategy, Demirors manages its proprietary investments portfolio. Over the past eight years, she has invested in more than 250 companies in the digital asset ecosystem via DCG and CoinShares, and is an active angel investor. She teaches at Oxford University as director of the Oxford Blockchain Strategy Programme at the Saïd Business School and is co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Cryptocurrency Council. Before getting into crypto, Demirors worked at ExxonMobil. In her spare time, she can be found reading science fiction, playing outdoor sports and “scheming with&nbsp;her friends on the internet”, she says.

Chief strategy officer

DiCaprio - Maini

Alisa DiCaprio was working in digitisation and trade finance at the Asian Development Bank, first in Manilla then in Tokyo, when she became interested in the potential uses of blockchain. “I found myself explaining what blockchain was to ministries of finance and central banks across the region,” she says. Initially, she viewed the technology as a way to solve problems in her current work. But DiCaprio is now chief economist at R3, the blockchain firm founded by chief executive David Rutter in 2015. She oversees research and market intelligence, advising on developments across the sector as well as engaging with central banks and regulators. She acknowledges that the digital assets industry is in a difficult spot, following the collapses of crypto exchange FTX and other market giants in the past year, but says the issues are not a failure of the underlying technology. Rather, they are due to factors such as high costs and low interoperability across the sector — problems R3’s products seek to solve. DiCaprio, who holds a PhD in international development from MIT and a master’s in international economics from Johns Hopkins University, is still bullish about the future prospects of the sector at large. “When I started working at R3, all of my meetings were trying to convince people they should look at blockchain. Now, everybody knows what it is and we are actually getting down to changing the pipes of finance,” she says.

Chief economist

Since leaving a job at social media giant Meta&nbsp;in 2020, Lauren Ingram has built several community organisations for the technology industries. The most recent of these was Women of Web3, which helps women to make the leap into digital assets and blockchain through job opportunities, learning resources and connections. Since founding the group in 2022 while she was on maternity leave, Ingram has spoken at more than 40 sector events and interviewed industry leaders including metaverse consultant Cathy Hackl and Adidas Web3 vice-president Erika Wykes-Sneyd for her podcast. At&nbsp;Meta, Ingram was responsible for #SheMeansBusiness, its multimillion-dollar programme for female entrepreneurs. She is&nbsp;a mentor at SheSays, which aims to advance women in the digital sector, and a member of&nbsp;the&nbsp;DevelopHer community for women in tech.&nbsp;

Founder

Before she joined industry association Global Digital Finance in 2019, Emma Joyce had a 13‑year career in events planning roles at traditional financial institutions, including Fidelity Worldwide Investment, PwC and Barclays. After&nbsp;Barclays, she joined Citigroup in 2011, later becoming vice-president of transaction services. As a vice-president in its global event marketing department, she oversaw two teams in&nbsp;Emea. She became a freelance producer in 2018, specialising in financial and political conferences and seminars. She initially joined Global Digital Finance as head of community and membership, before ascending in 2021 to executive director and a member of the board. While at&nbsp;GDF, she has helped turn the trade body into a global crypto advocacy giant. The organisation now has nearly 500 institutional members across 95 jurisdictions, following its merger with the Global Blockchain Business Council in May last year. Soon after, she became chief executive of the new organisation, GBBC Digital Finance. “We are dedicated to trying to create best practice for our members as well as working with policymakers and regulators to get regulatory clarity for the industry,” she tells Financial News. Joyce regularly participates in global industry conferences and events, often speaking on policy and regulatory issues as well as exploring blockchain for social impact.

Chief executive

Elke Karskens oversees the London operations of&nbsp;crypto exchange Coinbase, a role she took on in&nbsp;November. Before joining the company as senior&nbsp;marketing director in January 2022 she spent 11 years at social media giant Meta in&nbsp;the US and UK. There, she ran&nbsp;the tech giant’s international consumer marketing division and partnerships for its software-as-a-service business. She also previously led product&nbsp;marketing at Skype. Karskens has taken on&nbsp;her current role at a pivotal&nbsp;moment for Coinbase, as its chief executive Brian Armstrong considers whether the&nbsp;company should leave the&nbsp;US amid a regulatory crackdown. With the UK&nbsp;Treasury in the process of drawing up its own,&nbsp;likely more crypto-friendly set of&nbsp;regulations,&nbsp;the country could become a&nbsp;key&nbsp;part&nbsp;of any reorganisation of the world’s biggest crypto exchange, putting Karskens firmly&nbsp;in the driver’s seat.

UK country director

Simone Maini joined Elliptic as chief operating officer in 2016, before taking on the top job in 2020. In that time, she has helped turn Elliptic into one of the best-known blockchain analytics companies on the planet, as well as become a leading voice on financial crime prevention, compliance and regulation in crypto. Maini graduated from the University of&nbsp;Cambridge with a BA in history. She started her career in finance at Deutsche Bank, joining as a graduate in 2004 before working on&nbsp;corporate finance business management. She left in 2012 to become a senior director at Kroll, the&nbsp;corporate investigation and risk consulting firm, working from Washington DC. Maini has openly spoken in the past about imposter syndrome as&nbsp;a&nbsp;senior executive in crypto, having entered the&nbsp;industry without much prior knowledge of the&nbsp;asset class. “I think I still experience [imposter syndrome],” she said in a 2022 interview. “The&nbsp;ability to be open and ask newbie questions allowed&nbsp;me to get up the learning curve quickly.”&nbsp;

Malcolm - Snyder

Caroline Malcolm leads on public policy at Chainalysis, one of the biggest blockchain analytics&nbsp;firms in the industry. She founded the OECD’s Global Blockchain Policy Centre in&nbsp;2018 and&nbsp;was&nbsp;its head until 2021, working across fintech, competition policy, data governance and supply chain transparency. In 2019, she established the OECD’s Blockchain&nbsp;Expert Policy Advisory Board, bringing together more than 100 experts from across the world in government,&nbsp;industry, academia and civil society. She also co-led the Financial Stability Board’s work stream on decentralised fintech. In 2020, the World Economic Forum named Malcolm a Young Global Leader and she judged the G20 TechSprint hackathon. When she is not talking about crypto regulation, Malcolm&nbsp;runs, reads biographies, and immerses herself in&nbsp;new cultures and languages.

Global head of public policy

Sarah Pritchard jointly leads the Financial Conduct Authority’s supervision, policy and competition work, and is in charge of its cryptocurrency strategy — putting her in one of the most powerful public policy roles relating to the sector in the country. Pritchard was previously director at the National Economic Crime Centre, part of the National Crime Agency, and before that she was general counsel for the NCA. At the April City Week conference in London, Pritchard described crypto as a “one-time symbol of alternative rebellion [that] has become more widespread” and urged the room of industry insiders to help her regulate the sector “with our minds open to the potential gains and our eyes open to the risks”. An avid gardener and self-proclaimed bookworm, she says she sympathises with people taking an alternative path, such as those moving from finance to the digital assets industry. “You could say that I have embraced my inner alternative geek throughout my life and throughout my career, which has focused on fighting financial crime,” she told conference delegates. Pritchard’s career has involved stints in investigative, operational and legal roles in a range of government departments and in the private sector. In the private sector, she has led global financial crime compliance and&nbsp;reputational risk teams at HSBC, and qualified as a commercial litigator with law firm Dechert.

Executive director for markets

Nicole Sandler recalls that in her early days at Barclays, which she joined in 2013, she was helping her then-boss, who was the bank’s head of regulatory policy, prepare for a round table. “‘All anybody wanted to talk about in the breaks was blockchain,’ he said to me. We agreed I would spend more time focusing on this,” she says. And she hasn’t looked back since then. Now, Sandler is head of digital policy at the bank, leading Barclays’ work on the impact of blockchain, digital assets, central bank digital currencies, artificial intelligence and other technology on the wider financial landscape. She also represents Barclays on the European Commission’s Expert Group on Regulatory Obstacles to Financial Innovation, as well as similar task forces at the Global Financial Markets Association and UK Finance. Before moving in-house, Sandler was a&nbsp;senior associate at US legal giant Jones Day. She says one of the thorniest issues facing digital assets today is achieving regulatory clarity, but adds: “It is important to see how this can be viewed as an opportunity rather than just a challenge.” A qualified yoga instructor and avid swimmer, Sandler says her teenage self “would laugh” if she could see what she does now. “I could barely even get my Nokia mobile to work back then,” she says. But she adds that she has always been interested in&nbsp;policy and finding solutions to problems.

Head of digital policy

Ana Santillan was promoted in March this year to&nbsp;head of Emea financial institutions at Fireblocks, a platform for creating blockchain-based products and managing digital asset operations. She joined the firm in March 2021 and was responsible for setting up its office&nbsp;in Switzerland, of&nbsp;which she&nbsp;is now also co-country head. In&nbsp;2022, her role expanded to leading and managing the sales team in Switzerland and southern Europe. In her new position, Santillan collaborates with banks, asset managers and market&nbsp;infrastructure firms on launching new blockchain-based products. Santillan started her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs’ private wealth management division in Switzerland. She&nbsp;spent nine years at Morgan Stanley, in its wealth&nbsp;division and as vice-president, fixed income sales and trading. She moved to Zurich in 2011 to&nbsp;build the bank’s Swiss fixed income team, where&nbsp;she grew revenue from zero to $20m through the distribution of fixed income products to&nbsp;institutional investors.&nbsp;

Head of Emea financial institutions and Swiss co-country head

Ophelia Snyder co-founded 21Shares, the crypto-focused exchange traded product issuer, in 2018 with Hany Rashwan. Back then, the digital assets industry was still far from being regulated and crypto ETPs were relatively rare. Now, things are very different, with 21Shares alone having more than 30 of them. The firm also recently reapplied for a spot bitcoin exchange traded fund in the US in partnership with Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, having previously failed to gain regulatory approval for the product. Snyder is heavily involved in the technical side of&nbsp;the business. She is president of 21Shares’ parent company 21.co, and has oversight of its product, engineering and design channels. She&nbsp;is also involved in human resources, because she&nbsp;wants to&nbsp;boost diversity in the sector and lower the crypto industry’s barriers to entry for under-represented groups. Raised in Italy and the US, she previously held associate roles at investment banks&nbsp;Evercore and UBS in New York.

Co-founder and president

Soubiran - Young

Ambre Soubiran bought Kaiko in 2016 and with her at the helm, the firm has grown from a small data aggregation startup to one of the most widely used digital markets references for institutions. Today, Kaiko has three business units — data, analytics and indices — and its 160 institutional clients can access data from more than 100 exchanges. Holding a master’s degree in applied mathematics from the Université Paris Dauphine, Soubiran left a decade-long career at HSBC for crypto, predicting that blockchain would upend the banking industry. She now oversees a team of more than 90 globally, with offices in Paris, New York, London and Singapore. In 2022, Kaiko secured partnerships with traditional finance players such as Bloomberg and Deutsche Börse. Its real-time crypto price data feeds are streamed on various terminals. Soubiran&nbsp;led Kaiko’s third funding round in June 2022, raising $53m from investors including Eight&nbsp;Roads, Anthemis and Point9.&nbsp;

Dina White leads the legal function at Standard Chartered-backed institutional crypto exchange Zodia Markets, where she gives advice on strategy, governance and risk issues. Since its launch last summer, Zodia Markets has been steadily growing and has onboarded clients from traditional finance as well as crypto natives. White started her career at Clifford Chance in London in 2004 as a trainee lawyer, before working in its capital markets practice for six years. She worked for BNY Mellon between 2013 and 2020, taking on the role of M&amp;A counsel in 2016, and joined Zodia Markets in 2021 as its general counsel. White is a regular speaker on industry panels including Crafty Counsel, an event for in-house legal professionals. She is also a&nbsp;member of the International Digital Assets Counsel Association, and helped the organisation with its response to the UK Treasury’s consultation&nbsp;on regulating crypto. She is also a&nbsp;founding member of Chief, a private network that&nbsp;connects and supports female leaders.

General counsel

Katharine Wooller’s role at Coincover involves leading the firm’s commercial operation and its client services. Coincover, which provides technology to protect digital assets against hackers and human error, supports 300 firms in the digital asset space with seed phrase recovery (a series of words generated by a&nbsp;crypto wallet that gives the user access to the assets in that wallet) and theft prevention backed by Lloyd’s of London insurance. Cardiff‑based Coincover recently secured funding of $30m, with Foundation Capital as lead investor, and aims to grow from 50 to 100 employees over the course of 2023. Wooller runs Coincover’s lobbying efforts, is part of regulatory working groups with CryptoUK and Innovate Finance and contributes to the Digital Euro Association as an “expert member”. She also provided Coincover’s input on the EU’s Markets in Crypto-assets regulation, which the&nbsp;bloc recently approved. When not at work, she&nbsp;can&nbsp;be found competing her horses, going to the&nbsp;gym and cooking at a local homeless charity.&nbsp;

Business unit head

Jenna Wright joined foreign exchange trading company LMAX in 2009 as a client account manager. The world was in the midst of a global financial crisis at the time, while bitcoin was less than a year old. Few then would have predicted that institutional exchanges such as LMAX would be dealing with digital assets in less than a decade — least of all Wright herself. Wright soon rose to run LMAX’s foreign exchange brokerage, building out teams across the globe and leading the firm’s client management. She eventually took up the mantle of starting LMAX’s digital assets exchange, building the trading venue from the ground up. “We were starting from scratch,” she says. “LMAX Digital is my baby.” Wright now travels the world running LMAX Digital, one of the first institutional-grade crypto exchanges that is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The exchange has continued to expand and Wright made several senior appointments last year, including Bryan Christian as director of US sales and Cassandra Cox as director of institutional sales in Europe. As regulators circle the sector and the industry starts to move past last year’s “crypto winter”, the mother of two remains realistic about the future of digital assets. “Do I fully understand crypto now? Absolutely not,” she says. “I don’t think any of us do. And I think that’s what keeps us all engaged.”

Managing director

Sendi Young joined crypto payments firm Ripple in&nbsp;2021, having previously spent 15 years in fintech and payments. She has built Ripple’s headcount in Europe by about 75% in the past 18 months, and&nbsp;following the recent opening of an office in Dublin, she now oversees around 100 employees in Ireland, London and Reykjavik. Raised in Turkey and now a&nbsp;British national, Young also brings experience from HSBC, as&nbsp;well as global financial and operational advisory firm AlixPartners. Prior to joining Ripple, Young was head of digital and fintech at Mastercard. Earlier in her career, she spent time working in the&nbsp;US and Finland in various consulting roles for&nbsp;firms including Capgemini. Young has identified “crypto bro” culture as an ongoing issue for the sector and is an advocate for greater diversity. She is a board member at Tranglo Europe, a cross-border payments specialist, as well&nbsp;as an advisory board member at The Payments Association — Young is also responsible for Ripple becoming a member of the association.

Twenty Most Influential Women in Crypto 2023