Impact Investing & Blockchain with Diana Adachi

We recently sat down with one of our Senior Advisors and Board Members, Diana Adachi, to discuss Blockchain & Impact. Diana is an experienced tech executive and entrepreneur in blockchain and payments who has led initiatives around the globe. Together with our team, Diana will be focusing on impact opportunities enabled by emerging technologies and the circular economy. 

See the full interview transcript below, and interview highlights in the video above.  

True North (TN): Diana, we're very excited to have you on board at True North! Can you tell us a bit about your early years? Where did you grow up? 

Diana: Thank you, and really, it's been wonderful joining True North. I've had a lot of fun interacting with various team members, and of course the mission of True North really speaks to my heart. I grew up in Toronto, and I lived there up until about 2009. I then moved to Silicon Valley for nine years and I really did miss Toronto, and Canada. I moved back in 2018.  

TN: What prompted you to get into Fintech? Can you tell us a bit about your experience, and what fueled your interest? 

Diana: I think what attracted me to Fintech is technology, in general, having the potential to change the way in which we work, the way we live and the way we play. When I think back, my career has involved innovation and pushing boundaries, and in business, payments and financial services are critical. I always felt that there was a room for improvement in our financial systems. In the early 90s, my company was a partner to AOL– we were producing content for computing and games, and we had the opportunity to sell computer games. But, at that time, you couldn't take credit cards or really any payments online. So that got me starting to look at why we couldn’t, and that got me down that path Fintech. I think one of the other areas that shaped my experience and my focus was working in the area of prepaid cards, and stored value payments. Where that took me was really immersing into the underbanked the underserved markets.

TN: We’d love to hear a more about some of your professional experience, maybe a bit earlier on in your career. What was your first job after university? 

Diana: That was really an eye-opener for me, because when I went to school, I was in more of a general science– food science. When I finished, I went to work for IBM in sales, and at that time, it was very enjoyable because they were launching the IBM PC. So, this is dating me a bit, but you know “home computing”, that term became mainstream, and that was a game changer for individuals as well as for businesses. For me, starting out right out of university and working in that space was amazing. 

TN: Since then, you've had a very global career, but your presence is really strong on the west coast of North America. What prompted your decision to live and work in this region? 

Diana: In 2006-2007, there was a company that had recruited me, and they were changing their focus and development to payments as their domain expertise. They recruited me to head up sales and marketing, and the head office was in Silicon Valley. I worked for them for about a year, and they then promoted me to be their President, and relocated my whole family down to the Valley. Really for me, that was a great opportunity given the fact that I was in technology and in Silicon Valley. It’s a huge ecosystem, so it really made a lot of sense for me to be down there, not only to run this company, but also the experience of being immersed in that market.  

TN: You're now a very renowned thought leader in the blockchain space. When did you first learn about this technology, and how did you make it a focal point of your career? 

Diana: I started looking at Bitcoin and blockchain around 2014. Bitcoin, as we know, the first white paper– the Satoshi Nakamoto paper– came out in 2008. In 2013-2014, I started to become really curious as it started to build up some steam; at that time, I was with Accenture, and saw this as another game changer– particularly in the underserved populations because it democratized payments and the movement of money. Being at Accenture and one of the early people in the firm who was looking at this, as well as being in Silicon Valley, I had an opportunity to become a Global Lead for the firm. One of the things that I had the good fortune to do was leading a team to conduct due diligence on a company called Ripple. Ripple was early in developing a shared ledger technology used in the banking space. Ripple themselves had their own crypto called XRP, and that due diligence led Accenture to invest in Ripple. 

TN: We'd love to learn a bit more about blockchain and its potential value ads. Which pain points can blockchain relieve, and which industries are already benefiting the most from this tech? 

Diana: Blockchain is essentially a type of database of transactions, but what makes it unique is the transparency and immutability of data. Before data is actually written to a blockchain, there is some form of consensus. There is an agreement between the parties of who is actually working on that blockchain, and that transaction has been verified, validated, and approved, so it allows for a what we call a “trustless” system. Prior to blockchain, every company had their own database, so when companies do business with one another, each one has their own data that they trust. Blockchain allows companies that are doing business together and who transact together to not worry about the trust factor because the data is transparent, it has been validated and verified. When you think of industries like financial services, supply chain, digital asset management–it's not just one industry but it's the application that can be used in multiple industries. 

TN: At True North, we're always on the lookout for companies that carry impact as an integral part of their business model. Where do you see the greatest potential for blockchain to enable such impact-centric models? 

Diana: I think it can be in many areas. Particularly right now, given the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic, you'll see blockchain emerging in areas such as healthcare, finance, education– those are ones that I think are really front and center of people's minds and attention. And of course, climate and the environment. Those are the ones I'm seeing, and part of it is those are areas that I’m very interested in, and so I tend to see more of that. But I think that that these are the areas where we're going to see new business models and new partnerships emerge just because the power of blockchain is going to make a huge difference to these industries.  

TN: Can you share some of your experiences having leveraged blockchain to support underserved markets?  

Diana: There are a few companies that I sit on and have been a part of their advisory boards, and one company is called Cambiatus. They have open-source technology and they use an EOS.IO-based platform. They allow for communities, largely cooperatives, to build their own social currencies. Why that's important is if you only have one currency type, fiat or regular money for example, typically what you see in pandemics or in economic crises is that people tend to hoard their money. They’re concerned about the economy, or they're not working, and (if) they don't have fiat, they don't have any money. In communities and cooperatives, if there isn't money flowing, how are businesses going to be able to exchange services and goods? What Cambiatus has done is help these communities develop their own social currency, which is a form of crypto that typically stays within a community. It allows them to be able to exchange services through the use of the social currency. It allows communities to exchange value amongst themselves. Companies like Cambiatus are helping underserved communities be able to not only survive, but to thrive.  

TN: Why should impact investors look deeper into blockchain, and what should they know about it? 

Diana: Impact investing is about doing well by doing good. Blockchain allows companies and communities to collaborate in a very “trustless” and transparent way. Transactions are transparent and real-time, but again, it really is just a technology. What is important is how companies and leaders use the technology to drive their business models and reach markets that would have been difficult to access otherwise. It drives out inefficiencies and enables accountability. From an investment perspective, it's a lot more transparent. I’m really excited and looking forward to seeing some of the changes, not only here in North America, but in areas like Latin America and Africa. I’m just really excited for the future.  

TN: Can you shed light on your experience as a Woman in leadership in the historically male-dominated tech space. What advice would you give to young women looking to grow a career in tech? 

Diana: When I think about leadership, it's really about bringing people together to work towards and be aligned to some common goals. I think of myself as a servant leader, where I know my role is to support my team so they can succeed, and then by extension, the organization succeeds. At the end of the day, people want to know that they have value and that their contribution to the organization is valued. I think it’s imperative for leadership to enable their teams to succeed and to be recognized. Leaders also have to set the right vision, and have a path to get there, and this has to be “bought in” by the team. They have to allow their team to do what they need to do to get there, and trust that they will. To answer your question about how I navigated leadership in a male-dominated space: my approach has always been about authenticity. When you have experience working in large corporations and working with start-ups– working with people in general– there are common themes of allowing people to feel empowered, feel trusted and valued. That’s what drives loyalty and people wanting to do good. So, I always feel it’s really important to be as authentic as possible. For myself, it's about surrounding myself with good leaders, both female and male, who could support me, who I could reach out to and have conversations with and learn from. Whether you are mid-management or whether you're starting your career, the advice is the same. We all want to be able to lead, so I think it's good to surround yourself with people that you can trust and learn from. Over time, it helps bolster your ability to be able to lead. I don't think of this as male or female, I think of this as the way my experiences have taught me, and I feel very comfortable in that, and I think people I've worked with have really appreciated that. 

TN: What are you most looking forward to in working with True North? 

Diana: I really like True North’s mission and what they’re focused on. With traditional investing, it's about maximizing returns giving a certain risk preference. Impact investing is targeting competitive returns for a given risk class, while also ensuring that the investor's capital achieves positive outcomes. Impact investors often look at how the capital they invest today can generate positive societal or environmental effects for future generations. 

When I think about the footprint that True North can set as they develop and move forward, and the lives they’ll be able to affect, I get excited. With impact investing, there are improvements upon society, and investors can not only feel good about that but also get a return on their money. I think there's a misconception that impact means no returns, that there’s a trade-off. I think that's a big misconception because you can do both. A friend of mine talks about multi-dimensional wealth, and that's what I think about impact investing: it allows for many upsides, not only from a financial perspective, but to other parts of your life. It's that multi-dimensional wealth that I think True North is setting a path for with the companies they're investing in.