Kristin Smith

Blockchain is everywhere, and its reach is only continuing to grow. As the executive director of the Blockchain Association, Kristin Smith charts the strategic road map of public policy for the industry. That means she’s advising both industry leaders and politicians on the new technology and how it will be used to shape the future of both business and government in the country. Her job involves taking Ph.D.-level processes and breaking them down in ways that senators who spent the majority of their careers in a pre-Internet world can understand and then taking complicated congressional rules and explaining them in ways that programmers, used to finding the most concise solutions, will get. It’s not an easy role.

But Smith is taking it on, working to create a regulatory industry where crypto is protected, monitored, and can thrive.