A former IBM CFO is on a blockchain-based mission to get central banks to use digital currency

Over the past few years, many employees – including finance professionals and CFOs – have chosen to leave their jobs to seek more meaningful or mission-driven work.

“It’s been a trend that we’ve seen with executives as we’ve approached them on other opportunities,” Alyse Bodine, managing partner and global head of the Financial Officers Practice at Heidrick & Struggles, told me recently.

After a 10-year career in finance and technology at IBM, Carmelle Cadet made a pivot to work towards financial inclusion. Cadet is the founder and CEO of Emtech, a New York-based fintech startup with the goal of rebuilding central banking infrastructure for the Web3 era.

Cadet first joined IBM through an internship program and was hired as a financial analyst. But her path was towards leadership. “I became the assistant CFO of IBM’s Blockchain division when it launched,” she told me. “When I joined the division, I was on maternity leave, cramming in Bitcoin lessons on YouTube while feeding the baby,” Cadet joked. But when she returned to work, “I hit the ground running.”

Courtesy of Emtech

Cadet believes blockchain has transformational promise, with its ability to represent an asset virtually, with a clear understanding and transparency of who the owner is, and who has it at any given time. For example, “CFOs understand how difficult reconciliation is in finance,” she says. “That’s partly because each number moves on different systems. Blockchain really changes that.”

In her role as deputy CFO, she was responsible for facilitating the global product commercialization and financial management strategy. “We came up with a product that was aimed at digitizing money, and realized that there were still problems in the system,” she says. “The regulators and central banks didn’t really understand what the technology was.”

But for Cadet, this mission is more than just academic.

At the age of 16, she immigrated to the United States from Haiti and spent her early years as an unbanked person. If central banks used the technology to digitize paper currency, “we could make financial markets inclusive and robust by design” and create liquidity that benefits small businesses and individuals, she says.

Leaving my corporate job was a very big decision. “I spent years doing research before jumping in,” she says. Cadet started Emtech in 2019. Her son was two years old at the time and her husband was very supportive, she says. But it took some time before the mother came. “I’m an only child, and my mom said to me, ‘You don’t do this to me when I can tell all my friends that you work at IBM. What is this blockchain thing?'”

Covid began to spread just a few months after she took the entrepreneurial leap. “It was definitely scary because we didn’t have any customers or products at the time,” explains Cadet. “But our first win went to an accelerator in Silicon Valley.” It gives you the tools, but you still have to go and pitch your idea to VCs,” she says.

EmTech works with the Bank of Ghana, the Central Bank of the Bahamas, and actively engages several central banks, including Nigeria, the United States and Liberia. “We’ve won over two central banks as far as having a pilot, and on board with them, built the technology and launched it.” The banks wanted to digitize the regulation and compliance practices first, before introducing their own digital currency, says Cadet.

“We’ve raised $4 million now,” she says. “We are still a seed company. So, pre-series A. About 70% of our cap table is black investors and investors from Africa.”

The US does not have a central bank digital currency (CBDC). In September, however, the US Treasury Department recommended advancing work toward CBDC as part of the White House’s framework for the responsible development of digital assets. But experts say businesses are buying into blockchain. “Our estimate is that by 2024, at least 20% of large enterprises will use digital currencies for either payments, stored value or investments,” Avivah Litan, analyst and research vice president at Gartner, said in June.

The path to a founder is satisfying, but it is not easy, says Cadet. “A black woman as a tech CEO who is VC-backed is still rare,” she says. A new report from TechCrunch found that the Black founders raised $187 million in Q3, a steep drop from the nearly $1.1 billion they received in Q3 2021, and down from the $594 million the group raised in 2nd quarter.

When it comes to blockchain, CFOs need to get on board as it is the future, says Cadet. She is the CEO of her startup, who can also easily don the CFO hat again.

Have a nice weekend.

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

Big deal

The “2023 Workplace Learning Trends Report,” released by Udemy (Nasdaq: UDMY), an online marketplace for teaching and learning, highlights trends in business skills and learning cultures. The most used business skills fell within the categories of communication and management, with significant spending growth in customer experience management, up 449% year-over-year, and nonverbal communication (up 268%), according to the report. The research also highlights top technical and personal skills in demand. The findings are based on data from thousands of Udemy Business students globally and compare the total consumption of course topics between 2021 and 2022.

Courtesy of Udemy

Goes deeper

Here are some weekend reads:

“Carlyle is searching for a new CEO. Here are some internal candidates who want the job—and one high-profile external executive who probably won’t” by Luisa Beltran

“Meme-stock darling Bed Bath & Beyond appoints Sue Gove as permanent chief executive amid store closures and destocking” by Lucy Brewster

“Gen Zers don’t think they’ll ever own a home, bracing for long-term financial instability” by Tristan Bove

“This expert’s 7-day food and exercise bootcamp will help boost your brain health” by Marc Milstein

Leaderboard

Here is a list of some notable moves this week:

Ned Segal, CFO of Twitter, was reportedly fired from the company on Thursday after Tesla CEO Elon Musk completed his $44 billion deal to take over the social network, Reuters reported. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Segal joined Twitter in 2017. Prior to that, he was SVP of Finance at Intuit. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, and head of legal affairs and policy Vijaya Gadde, were also fired, according to reports.

Celeste Mellett, The CFO of Evercore (NYSE: EVR ), an investment banking advisory firm, will leave the company for the position of partner and CFO of Global Infrastructure Partners, an independent infrastructure investor. Evercore will begin a formal search process for its next CFO. Mellet, who began her role in July 2021, will continue working with the Evercore team through February 2023. Prior to joining Evercore, she was EVP and CFO at Fannie Mae.

Georges Elhedery was appointed CFO of HSBC Holdings PLC and CEO of the Board, effective January 1, 2023. Ewen Stevenson will step down as CFO and CEO on December 31, leaving HSBC in April 2023. Elhedery most recently served as co-CEO of global banking and markets. He joined HSBC in 2005 as senior manager of global markets.

Sudhanshu Priyadarshi was named CFO of Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. (Nasdaq: KDP), effective November 14. He will lead the finance and information technology organizations. Priyadarshi was most recently CFO of Vista Outdoor Inc. He began his career at PepsiCo, where he spent 14 years in roles including CFO of Global R&D and PepsiCo Global Nutrition Platforms. He was also previously CFO at Flexport and held a VP of finance and strategy at Walmart.

Brad Nagel was named CFO of Electromed, Inc. (NYSE American: ELMD), a provider of airway clearance technology, effective November 14. Most recently, Nagel held the position of divisional finance director for global lung health and visualization at Medtronic. Prior to that, he held various roles of increasing responsibility in finance at Medtronic, Target Corporation and TCF Bank.

Overheard

“The $44 billion price tag for Twitter will go down as one of the most overpaid tech buys in the history of M&A deals on the street in our opinion. Musk buying Twitter remains a major head-scratcher.”

— Wedbush Securities technology analyst Dan Ives wrote in a Thursday note to clients, Fortune reported.