By: Geeq  on May 7, 2020

We’re proud to announce Geeq Co-Founder Stephanie So was recognized as one of 4 Women Driving Game Changing Tech for Dell Technologies’ Women’s History Month.

Women in STEM (2020)

As Dell Technologies celebrated its 2020 selections for Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), it chose to highlight “four modern-day innovators working at game-changing companies.” Stephanie, who is the Co-Creator of Geeq’s Proof of Honesty and Geeq’s Chief Development Officer, was selected for her work at the forefront of the blockchain industry.

Along with Lauren Hasson (DevelopHer, a platform to connect women in STEM careers), Jessica Nouhavandi (HoneyBee Health, an online pharmacy), and Vanessa Bryan (Draper, a NFP engineering services company), Stephanie sat down to discuss her career in tech with Steph Walden.

While a STEM background is indisputably useful for anchoring a tech company, Stephanie identified a different part of the STEM toolkit as equally critical: the skill of triage. She revealed that universal buy-in on which technical, client, or other development efforts to tackle, and in what order, has been one of the secret ingredients for the Geeq team’s cohesion.

There are some parts of the economy that are really suffering that can be helped by blockchain technology. Geeq has managed to attract people who are like-minded in the sense that “we all understand these problems can’t be solved by throwing money at them—they have to be solved in stages.

Game Changing Tech

As for her plans for the longer run, Stephanie’s intentions have been clear from the beginning. One way to express the value of the Geeq Platform is to think of it as a way to change the rules for the markets of information. In Stephanie’s January 2019 interview with Tyler Gallagher, she articulated a concern that resonates even more strongly today, as governments scramble to deal with the COVID pandemic.

Companies have a lot of control over our data now because we don’t have ways to hold them accountable. More fundamentally, we don’t even know what they are doing. I think it is past time to shift power away from companies and to the individual. I feel a tremendous sense of urgency to flip that power dynamic before it is too late.

Since that 2019 interview, Stephanie and the rest of the Geeq team have been turning Geeq into the game changer it is destined to be. Geeq’s Proof of Honesty redefines and elevates blockchains’ functionality such that any user can count on Geeq to preserve a reliable, continuously available audit trail that not only determines if a blockchain has been altered but can guarantee the originally validated version will always be available for comparison.

Relevance in the Age of a Pandemic

Why is Geeq so important in the context of health data collection and surveillance for COVID? On Geeq blockchains, users can verify whether others are keeping blockchain records of what was validated and obtain proof if they find records elsewhere that are deviant. For the first time, Using Geeq, for the first time, blockchain users can hold each other accountable for the integrity of their data.

Imagine the chaos that would ensue if health insurers could alter the timestamp on a COVID test to charge more for COVID-positive procedures when, in fact, they occurred while a patient had a negative test result. These scenarios are not only plausible, they are likely.

Geeq’s decentralized platform provides a mutually assured way to deter fraud and resolve claims by providing indisputable evidence on its blockchains.

One could imagine the situation reversed. What would happen if a worker could falsify a COVID-positive test result to a COVID-negative? While other blockchains could, in theory, be manipulated, Geeq’s Proof of Honesty circumvents those problems with older blockchain technology.

Accountability as a Policy Discussion

Having said that, changing the balance of power over user data requires more than providing more advanced technology. In her conversation with Tyler, Stephanie described the sequence of steps that are needed to turn accountability into an actionable agenda item.

I want to backstop the ability of governments to collect our data without our consent. Once we develop the technology to protect individual rights, then we can have a credible and serious discussion about regulation, standards and mitigation for government use of our data.

Geeq’s solutions cannot come quickly enough.

Please read more about Stephanie’s background here. If you liked this post, you might enjoy this one as well. You can follow Stephanie on LinkedIN or on Twitter as @ComplicatedIsOK.

Photo by Hope House Press – Leather Diary Studio on Unsplash