Less than 3-percent of venture capital funding goes towards women. Web3 is a new technology but has an old problem: not enough women. Right now is the perfect time for women to enter this space. Michelle Abbs is working to bring more women into the web3 space with web3 Equity, an educational company to onboard and empower more women to engage in web3 as investors, collectors, builders, and creators.
Forbes featured Michelle as one of the top women in NFTs, and Hackermoon ranked her as one of the top 16 most influential women in NFTs. She is regarded as a visionary leader in web3. In her previous role at Mana Tech, she helped put Miami onto the global NFT map with NFT BZL. She launched and solidified Mana Tech at the forefront of Miami’s tech ecosystem through partnerships with respected tech leaders.
A recent ArtTactic report found that women make up only 16-percent of the NFT art market. It also revealed that over 66-percent of United States cryptocurrency investors are men, of that about 60% of them white.
After the conference during Basel, Michelle’s friends began bombarding her with questions about NFTs. She started a group chat on Christmas Eve of 2021 with 30 friends. The response was overwhelming: the group chat sprouted a life of its own and inspired Michelle to act. “I decided to found an educational community to offer resources that would onboard more women and empower allies to understand how we can make web3 more equitable for all genders,” she explained.
Education is at the core of her being. She was a Teach for America (TFA) teacher, then trained other TFA teachers, and later oversaw the TFA Miami Dade Country region with over 300 public school teachers under her leadership.
She quickly realized that technology was a crucial differentiator in learning outcomes. She transitioned to education tech startup Nearpod to help facilitate reducing this technology gap between rich and poor school zones. Starting web3 Equity as an educational community to drive more women into web3 is the perfect evolution of her background and career.
Michelle launched Web3 Equity in March 2022 with an NFT collection called the Tuttle Tribe, with over 1,400 members. It was named the Tuttle Tribe after one of Miami’s founders, Julia Tuttle. In partnership with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and the Venture Miami team, she dropped and minted the NFT collection of 3,050 NFTs with artwork embracing the female leadership examples and weaving together the elements of femininity, wealth creation in web3, and the vibrant colors of Miami. The NFT serves as a membership pass to web3 Equity’s educational community, including free IRL and virtual learning, discounts to conferences, coding boot camps, academies, and more.
It provides in-person and online learning opportunities around various web3 topics, including DAOs, wallet security, information on different protocols, tokenomics, and more. Web3 Equity gives women the knowledge, network, tools, and funds to create and actively participate in this space and demand the gender equity they deserve.
Web3 Equity has helped over 700 women buy their first NFT and hosted numerous in-person events in Miami for almost 3,000 people in just five months. This organization has hosted several IRL events sponsored by Sandbox, OneOf, Superworld, Brex and SVB. It also partnered with Republic Realm to sponsor ten women for its Metaverse Academy, and partnered with BrainStation for developer scholarships.
“I’ve spent my entire life trying to right the wrongs of institutional bias that has been baked into the structure of education and entrepreneurship,” said Michelle. “I truly believe we have a chance to get things right in web3 if we focus on equity and inclusion in these formative moments of building the foundational structure. For example, the venture capital model was created in the early 1970s. Fifty years later, we see less than 3% of VC funding going to female-founded startups. Instead of needing to fix this horrifying statistic, my goal is that we have equal gender representation from the beginning, and we create a Metaverse that includes everyone.”
The power of web3 and blockchain technology will impact every sector – and in unimaginable ways today, envisions Michelle. She believes people will embrace the hybrid work model using VR in office settings and education in the next five years.
“The internet broke down distance barriers and allowed us to connect with people all over the world – no matter where we were,” she said. “The Metaverse takes these connections deeper by adding a visual experience with new selfexpression modalities.”
The opportunities of web3 are limitless. Web3 and blockchain technology will change the world for decades to come, believes Michelle. “We are architecting the foundational structures, and this is the time for women to be at the table making decisions, making money and shaping the future. Our community is meant to offer a learning vessel with all resources, webinars, and IRL experiences to help onboard more women into web3.”
Website: web3equity.io
