A Q&A with Michelle Abbs: The goal is gender equity. ‘We’ve got to take this to the finish line’
By Nancy Dahlberg
Michelle Abbs leads a movement to bring women to web3. Her organization, Web3 Equity, aims to shape the future of technology through education and female empowerment.
“The vision is that web3 is gender equitable. That’s the thing that wakes me up in the morning,” she says. “And I believe the way that we get there is by educating and empowering more women in this precise moment.”
After she put on the NFT BZL event during Art Week last fall, Abbs was surprised by the flood of interest, particularly from women. By the end of the year, she formed a chat group, and after a great reception to that, she founded Web3 Equity. Then in March, Web3 Equity dropped the Tuttle Tribe – a beautiful collection of NFTs named after Miami’s founding mother, Julia Tuttle.
Fast forward a few months and Web3 Equity has helped women go from fearful to fearless creators.
Today, the non-profit counts about 1,500 creators, entrepreneurs and investors as members and part of the movement. The great majority of them are in the Miami area, presenting an opportunity for the emerging #CryptoCapital to embrace and showcase its diversity.
Web3 Equity provides a safe space for women to ask questions and connect through its web3-focused events, educational workshops and chat group. One recent event was Bring Your BFF to Web3 that Web3 Equity partnered on with BFF, a national organization with a similar mission that is bringing this particular event around the nation. Miami, a rising hub for all things crypto, was the first stop.
For this event, hundreds of women (and some males, too) gathered at the Perez Art Museum Miami to celebrate web3 and were urged to bring along a friend new to crypto. Many did. They heard renowned (and female) speakers from companies including Jadu, Vayner3, MoonPay, Unstoppable Domains and Ledger who talked about why they were creating and how they were bringing Web3 to the masses. Then there were activations set up so that women could get started on their web3 journey.
So far, web3 startups are dominated by men, like Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. And we all know that women-led teams attract only a tiny sliver of VC and are woefully underrepresented in C-suites and in most tech workforces. What’s more, the majority of holders of crypto and NFTs so far are men. But it’s so early in the web3 transformation and now’s the time to make change, says Abbs.
She says Web3 Equity will also engage male allies who want to help further the mission but aren’t sure how. The organization also works with corporations.
“This is still the moment when we’re building the infrastructure that is going to be part of all our day to day lives in the future. If we have more women at the table now, I believe that web3 will be gender equitable,” Abbs says.
Abbs started her career as a teacher and leader with Teach for America. She previously ran Babson WIN Lab Miami, an accelerator program for female entrepreneurs, among other endeavors. “The teacher part, that’s in me forever,” she says.
Here are more excerpts of my recent conversation with Abbs about how Web3 Equity is progressing.
What was your biggest takeaway from your recent event with BFF?
From the people that I talked to who brought someone who had not engaged with anything crypto yet, it was a powerful trusting experience to have their best friend there with them as they were actually going through some of those stations … like, Oh, this is the digital wallet, let’s go here first and let’s get your wallet set up and then OK, let’s come over here, now we need a ledger…” That was really cool to hear because that was the idea.
Why was it important to you to found the Tuttle Tribe?
I don’t know that I totally knew this part of the answer back then, but I’d say as a group of women who want to be in this moment of technological advancement, it was really important for us to have a shared identity. And now it is incredible to be at these events or to see other ambassadors and folks from the community and then they share photos and they are saying, I’m with my Tuttle Tribe sisters and we met through a Web3 Equity event.
The reason why we launched the collection was because we were talking so much about web3 and NFTs and I didn’t want it to be something that was in the ether. It needed to be something real and tangible. If we were going to teach people how to buy an NFT, let’s actually walk you through the process — and then you have this as a digital asset that is part of your digital wallet and something you can carry with you forever.
The Tuttle Tribe, as the NFT, a beautiful piece of digital art, also represents access to the educational content at the in-person learning events. And then Web3 Equity, broadly, is an education and onboarding organization.
How do you see Web3 Equity progressing?
I always want it to be a safe haven, a place for people who are curious and they’re just starting and they want to ask the questions that they might feel reticent to ask in other places. But I have now targeted a couple of partners who also see the energy and the inspiration of the women in this group who are ready to now push to that next level. It’s literally like dry powder. So [we’re exploring] what does it look like to drill into more of these advanced blockchain builder topics, so that we can see more women founders in more of the other headlines that you write up. I want to see more of those being female founded so that is the evolution of this.
What do you have planned for Art Week? What’s coming up?
We have great partner events coming up. I really appreciate other organizations who have said we have a keen eye towards diversity and inclusion and we want to partner and offer something special to your community. So we’ve done that with Propy, with TechCrunch and their upcoming Crypto Session series, and others, and then we have another learning event on November 21, our FrensGiving where we can come together as a community and celebrate gratitude. And then during Miami Art Week, we have a big one that we haven’t announced yet. (In other words, stay tuned!).
It’s amazing that in less than a year you already have 1,500 members. What does success look like for you?
It looks like the verbs that we use in our mission — to educate and empower women to take action in Web3. We never defined what that action would be — if they want to create, that’s wonderful. If they want to invest, that’s wonderful. If they want to build their own companies, that’s wonderful. So now I’m looking at how many women are actually feeling that empowerment. When I see these new communities that have been created, that feels a lot like success.
There’s a woman who started a Mothers in the Metaverse token economy. I see groups of people who moved here just last year and they didn’t know anyone and now this is their whole friend group and projects and companies have been built out of it. Sharon Holm started The Sisterverse recently, and Sharonda Davis, who is known as NFT Nurse, started a DAO for nurses. The founders of Mission Impact I think will hire their whole team out of our community.
Things are happening and I’m really focused on making sure we have more at that end of the spectrum. With a lot of these news articles that come out, it’s still male-led teams.
We’ve got to take this to the finish line and have more women building and getting funding. That’s what success looks like.
Michelle Abbs, Web3 Equity
How can the community help you?
The event that we held with BFF was successful, I think, because we had so many partners who put skin in the game, they put the dollars there to make that event happen. I’d like to find the companies that truly want onboarding and educational experiences and then having them value those. My call to action is for companies, whether they are Web3 native or Web 2 that are moving toward Web3, to really value this and have some skin in the game by participating as sponsors in these events.
[To everyone], to support ongoing efforts to educate and onboard women to web3 and engage male allies, please consider a donation during Give Miami Day on November 17th.
Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter @ndahlberg and email her at [email protected]
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