Participant Profiles for Ukiyo Conference, 2019
Ukiyo is an independent, not-for-profit event, organised by community members Kelsie, Asuka, Anna and Mayato.
Ivana Jurko is a co-founder and Research and Development Manager of Humanitech at Australian Red Cross. As Australia’s largest humanitarian organisation and a member of the world’s largest humanitarian movement, Australian Red Cross supports people and communities in times of vulnerability caused by disasters, conflict or disadvantage. Humanitech is a strategic collaborative initiative dedicated to the exploration of opportunities and challenges at the intersection of emerging technologies and humanitarian action. Ivana has over 15 years’ experience in the social sector, and has previously worked at Oxfam Australia, Headspace, and Beyondblue. Her areas of practice include social policy and research, humanitarian futures and foresight, and design and delivery of complex social initiatives.
Sandra Uwantege Hart is the Pacific Cash & Livelihoods Lead for Oxfam, based in Vanuatu. She joined Oxfam in 2017, and manages the regional portfolio of humanitarian cash transfer response and preparedness projects in the Pacific. This includes the UnBlocked Cash project, the Pacific’s first blockchain use case for delivering humanitarian assistance. Sandra has over 10 years of experience in disaster response and coordination in the Pacific, Asia, the Caribbean, and West Africa, working with NGOs, the UN, and in Microfinance. She has an academic background in anthropology, feminism and human development, and is currently enrolled in the Ethereum Foundation DevCon Scholars program to build her learning on all things blockchain. Sandra is a dual national of Rwanda and the USA.
Theo (@theobtl) joined the blockchain space in 2016 where his first touch point were decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) which are still at the core of his work within the community as a co-editor at OrgTech Review and a mentor at DAOincubator. In his main job withGIZ Blockchain Lab, Theo conceptualises decentralised solutions for developing countries. With a background in information systems and innovation management, he connects the political sphere in international development with the technical and design capabilities in the blockchain community. His employer GIZ is a development agencythat implements projects in line with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in 120 developing countries worldwide. Theo is based in Berlin.
Ric Shreves is Mercy Corps’ Director of Emerging Technology. In that role, he explores new technologies and innovations for humanitarian aid and development. Ric also engages across the agency to facilitate the exploration of the potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrencies and is the author of two Mercy Corps white papers on blockchain technology. Prior to joining Mercy Corps, Ric worked for two decades as an IT consultant and author. His clients included BASF, The Economist Group, Tesco, Colgate-Palmolive, and many others. Ric is based in Portland, Oregon, where he moved in 2016 after living in Asia for twenty-one years. Since 2006, Ric has authored over a dozen books on open source technologies.
Nydia Zhang is the co-founder and chairman of Social Alpha Foundation (SAF), a non-profit grant-making platform that focuses on supporting Blockchain education and outreach to empower communities to utilize Blockchain technology for social good. In Social Alpha Foundation, we provide Education Grant and Application Grant to support Blockchain research and non-commercial Blockchain Applications that tackle social welfare issue with a focus on public health, education, and environment as areas of urgent need.Nydia Zhang is a cryptocurrency investor and Blockchain enthusiast since 2016. She is the Fund-raising Committee Member ofthe Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children (HKSPC), Co-Chair of Financial Literacy & Inclusion Committee at The Fintech Association of HongKong (FTAHK) and also sits on the Director’s Circle Board of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.