Dr. Jane Thomason – Cointelegraph Magazine

Jane Thomason is an Australian academic who spent 15 years running hospitals and developing development work abroad, followed by a 20-year period of building a company with a turnover of 250 million dollars.

Thomason – now the World Health Organization blockchain adviser – says she “had a revelation” while thinking about the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, in which the lives of more than 200,000 people were washed away.

“No one knew the identities of the people who came to the hospitals – all the identity documents were gone, all the bank records were gone, all the health records were gone. People wanted to send money to the people who were alive, but no one could send money directly.”

Thomason believes that if this data had been recorded on a blockchain, “people would be able to reconnect their data very quickly and access their identity, health and bank records.” The recognition convinced Thomason that she needed to play a role in helping technology scale for humanitarian applications.

“My blockchain story is pretty sweet,” says Thomason, explaining that she “completely ignored” her son’s advice when in 2010 he encouraged her to buy Bitcoin. He took up the subject again in 2015, and became “really frustrated” by Thomason’s passivity.

He said, ‘Listen – Bitcoin is built on blockchain, and blockchain is going to change everything, and you have to learn about it. ”

Thomason began to read, and after several months he began to feel a strong attraction to the industry. She has since turned into the “blockchain for social impact” niche and is the author of several books, including Blockchain technology for global social change and Blockchaining world, and acts as a blockchain advisor to various international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Thomason believes that beyond all talk of cryptocurrency, blockchain is a technology that can solve practical problems for some of the most disadvantaged groups in the world by facilitating and securing identity, health records, banking, supply chains and supporting climate action. Despite the rosy picture, she is still concerned about the current state of the industry and questions whether the industry understands its own climate footprint.

Social benefits of blockchains

When it comes to blockchain and identity, Thomason believes that government recognition is the biggest obstacle because many people around the world do not have any type of ID, to begin with. Identity is a person’s “window to the world”, which makes it perhaps the most important problem to solve.

Financial inclusion can be tackled with stack coins, which people can easily send and receive. Despite being widely praised by the Bitcoin community, Thomason remains skeptical of El Salvador’s decision to make Bitcoin a legal tender due to its inherent volatility.

While running the London Blockchain Week Hackathon in 2017, conveniently sponsored by Abt Associates, Thomason invited a group of central bankers from the Bank of Papua New Guinea to witness “200 of the smartest people in the world sitting there trying to figure out how to solve this problem of financial inclusion. ” The winners then followed them to Papua New Guinea to create a proof-of-concept for a new payment system.

“They went to a super-isolated village, and without power and only 2G mobile phones, and were able to make transfers to that village and convert it to fiat in the local store.”

When it comes to supply chains, Thomason is quick to point out problems even in the medical sector regarding counterfeit personal protective equipment, which began circulating during the pandemic. If supply chains can be clearly registered on blockchains, both manufacturers and buyers can “see transparently right through the entire supply chain and know what’s going on.” The same applies to food and can help farmers avoid exploitation through openness.

Thomason also sees a bright future for blockchain as a tool for climate action. One possibility, she says, is the tokenization of green bonds and carbon compensations, as well as NFTs, which can represent carbon compensations. She cites the example Brooklyn Microgridwhich is a marketplace for locally generated solar energy.

In developing countries, she explains, someone with a solar panel can sell generated power to others for micropayments, and make electricity available in places where people otherwise could not keep a cell phone charged. Developing countries often serve as a good evidence base for new technology, which can also be implemented on much larger scales in developed economies.

Building blocks

In the wake of her revelation, she left her position at Abt Associates, the parent company that had bought her company JTA International in 2014. She had built JTA for 20 years, and it had over $ 250 million in sales and 600 employees.

She had to regroup. “I started traveling the world, attending blockchain conferences and meetings,” looking for ways she could contribute to the budding sector. One of the first things she did was start advising on various projects, including Kerala Blockchain Academy and Shyft Network.

Thomason found that joining blockchain projects was important because “if you do not belong to an organization, people think you’re a little weird.” When she was not affiliated, she found it difficult to be taken seriously as a blockchain advocate as a tool for social influence at a time when everyone was simply trying to raise millions of dollars with ICOs.

She came from a work culture where business cards were the norm, and noticed that the participants in blockchain conferences instead preferred to connect digitally. Thomason found herself setting up a LinkedIn profile where she began writing about blockchain and social influence. “Accidentally and completely organically, I got this following,” she says, referring to her 26,000 followers.

“If you believe in something and have something important to say, you can build a following without maintaining it.”

With all his explorations of the industry, Thomason came to the view that there was a need for deeper education related to ways blockchain could be used to create impact.

In 2019, she launched Social Impact Week in London, and “in 2020 we had our last blockchain week just before the borders closed” due to the pandemic, after which Thomason was actually stuck in Australia for two years.

“I spent my time under lockdown learning about DeFi,” she says, explaining thin 2020, she acquired Novum Insights, an analysis company for decentralized finance (DeFi) in which she investedn provided she is allowed to work directly with the team to learn about DeFi. The experience, says Thomason, inspired her to write her fifth book Applied ethics in a digital age. She could move to Dubai in 2022.

Health care development

Thomason was born in Scotland before moving to Australia, where her father worked as a rural doctor in North Queensland. When she was 16, her mother took her on an Oxfam study trip to Indonesia, which “was like a combination of vacations, but you go and see all their development projects, and you see the good work they do. “, Thomason remembers.

She began her career after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work from the University of Queensland in 1979, after which she volunteered at the Asia Development Bank in Indonesia before completing her master’s degree in public health at the University of Sydney in 1981.

Thomason’s research involved fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, where she learned about the challenges that economically and geographically isolated people face. After completing his Ph.D. In 1994, Thomason returned to Queensland to work as the CEO of a hospital, among other positions.

In 1999, Thomason founded JTA International to develop public health in developing countries. Over time, it expanded to various other industries, including mining, and was sold to Abt Associates in 2014, with Thomason agreeing to stay on board for four years “to expand the company in Asia and the Pacific to other non-healthcare sectors. ” In the years that followed, the company tripled its revenue from $ 50 million to $ 250 million. However, when Thomason saw a great need for digital transformation, he stepped down as CEO in 2017 to become the parent company’s global ambassador for the Center for Digital Transformation in the UK.

@janeathomason talks about wellness in Metaverse.

An event of @MetaDecryptCo on @MOTF .@webzz @ amitkumar0331 @ RichaPatil28 @sarahvaibhavali @khaleejtimes pic.twitter.com/Lut3yXr1Qo

– Cryptonite.ae (@CryptoniteUae) July 2, 2022

Although Thomason sees NFTs as a valuable canvas for digital art in support of climate initiatives, she is quick to address what she sees as their dark side: Ethereum’s current power consumption. “I’m a little wary of that because most NFTs are based on Ethereum, and Ethereum is one of the power blockchains,” she notes. Such art would in no way solve climate change, but she sees it as a way to stimulate climate action and reward artists.

“I feel we need to find ways to move the NFT community away from Ethereum and to Algorand, Solana, Cardano and the less energy-hungry blockchains.”

Ethereum creates Vitalik Buterin argues that the chain’s forthcoming transition to proof-of-stake will provide an appropriate solution for climate considerations.

Over time, Thomason notes that many others have begun to advocate for the climate and social benefits of blockchain. One of these is Miroslav Polzer, European climate pact ambassador to Austria, who is “trying to build a DAO for climate action”.

As new technologies are integrated with blockchain, perhaps as biometric suit carried by Cage The Elephants lead singer, Thomason envisions a setting where Internet-of-Things devices can measure positive actions performed by humans, and “a smart contract can trigger a payment to people for having taken that climate action.”

“I think the job we have ahead of us is really an educational job because we are so engrossed in what is happening in currencies that most people have no idea about the social benefits of blockchain,” Thomason concludes.

Read more: Six questions for Jane Thomason

6 questions to Jane Thomason from Kasei Holdings