Technology pervades every aspect of our culture, influencing how we live, produce goods, work, educate our society, and other domains. Technology drives our economy and is the pathway to our future. Technology goods and services are produced and given with only half of the population’s viewpoints in mind, rather than with everyone’s needs in mind. Women account for half of all consumers, and technology businesses must augment their current efforts to incorporate this important population segment into their workforce, as well as into the product design and development process.
This gender gap is hindering many women from fully participating in defining our society’s future, although STEM occupations are expected to be among the most sought-after in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
A renowned woman in tech, Dr. Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes is a proud Forbes Business Council member, digital strategist, passionate educator, and entrepreneurship ecosystem builder, known as an expert speaker, board advisor, and thought leader. As a healthcare executive, futurist, and globalist, she remains highly dedicated to digital and ethics advocacy.
Ingrid is now the CEO of Softhread, where she offers strategic direction as well as accelerates the development of new commercial solutions in the company’s portfolio. She says, “We are proud of our existing projects and ongoing relationships with several technology companies that have demonstrated our capabilities within life sciences and healthcare, the space industry, and smart city cybersecurity.”
Additionally, Ingrid strongly believes “we have an individual duty to facilitate the attainment of the United Nations SDGs and has enjoyed bringing value via participation in numerous international organizations that focus on fostering entrepreneurship, economic empowerment, and innovation.”
A Journey to Proficiency
Ingrid has several executive certifications that complement her medical and business degrees, including Bioethics from Harvard, Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy from MIT Sloan, Blockchain Technology and Business Innovation from MIT Sloan, Finance from Harvard Business School, Negotiation from Harvard Law School, Innovation and Entrepreneurship from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is also a Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management, Patient Safety Officer by the International Board Federation of Safety Managers, Master Black Belt in Lean and Six Sigma Management, Professional in Healthcare Quality by the National Association of Healthcare Quality, Manager for Quality and Organizational Excellence, by the American Society for Quality, and Certified Risk Management Professional by the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management.
Aside from being the Founder and CEO of The Science, Entrepreneurship, and Investments Institute, she is also the Founder and CEO of RevExpo Consulting. Ingrid serves as the Country Director for WBAF USA, a Senior Senator of WBAF. She enjoys teaching as a Faculty Member of the WBAF Business School-Division of Entrepreneurship, and at the Executive MBA Business Technology Course at the University of Miami Business School. She also serves as the Chief Innovation Officer for the Government Blockchain Association, an international non-profit organization, as part of her dedication to encouraging the use of innovative technology.
Throughout her career, Ingrid has had the privilege of being recognized for her work and has received several awards for excellence in research, teaching, or leadership. Most notable are her WBAF World Excellence Award for Social Entrepreneurship 2021, Top 5 Global Health Tech Leader, Top 25 Quantum Technology Leader, Top 20 Global Leaders in Digital Twins Technologies, Top 50 Global Leaders in Health Tech, Top 50 Global Ecosystem Leaders, Top 100 Visionary In Education Award 2021, Top 100 Global Women in Leadership Award 2021, Top 100 World Women Vision Award, 2021-Innovation & Tech, Top 150 Women in Business To Follow, Top 100 Women in Social Enterprise 2021 (nominee), Top 50 Global Thinkers ( Nominee), Nations of Women Change Makers Award ( finalist), Top 100 Healthcare Leader 2020 Award, Top 100 Finance Leader 2020 Award, Top 100 Women in Crypto 2020. Additionally, Ingrid serves as an Expert Advisor to the EU Blockchain Observatory Forum and has been appointed to the Board of Advisors for several UN-affiliated organizations.
Most recently, Ingrid served as President of Detect Genomix, Chief Quality and Safety Officer, Chief and Innovation Officer for Mednax, Chief Quality and Safety Officer, and Chief of Compliance for the University of Miami UHealth System. She states, “I continue to hold advisory board roles in several companies, entrepreneurship incubators, or accelerators and strive to contribute to the global thought leadership ecosystem through my role as an Editorial Board Member for several international publications, author, keynote speaker, and TV/Media partner.”
Softhread
Softhread is an information technology business that provides industry-agnostic, environment-agnostic, and platform-agnostic software that helps enterprises handle highly private data more securely and effectively inside their networks, settings, and devices.
Softhread uses Chios™, a patent-pending blockchain and artificial intelligence-enabled platform that maintains confidentiality and enhances network security while improving operational efficiency. Softhread creates scalable enterprise solutions that are highly flexible, industry-agnostic, cloud-enabled, and cloud-independent, and optimizes the ROI of data management through its decentralized approach that enables cutting-edge interoperability.
Chios™ is an AI and blockchain technology-powered platform developed by Softhread Inc. that is ideally positioned to enable the secure decentralization of any data held by people, devices, networks, a system of networks, and other regulated workloads. The company’s patent-pending Chios™ platform has been specifically designed for the confidential computing and compliance requirements of highly regulated industries such as healthcare, life sciences, insurance, space, and government technology domains and to augment the security of data exchanges in smart cities.
Pre-built, privacy-preserving smart contracts, advanced user access control overlays, support for publish-subscribe messaging patterns, and interaction with off-chain, confidentiality-preserving machine learning models are among Chios™’s primary capabilities.
Ingrid states, “Our unique, patent-pending platform is specifically designed to address IoT network security and data management at scale.”
A Wide View for All Visionary Women
According to Ingrid, the current extremely dynamic and turbulent global socio-economic and political environment rewards leaders that adopt an exponential thinking style, have a high-risk tolerance, and are extremely resilient. Furthermore, the digital era has stressed the need for digital fluency and compatibility with the UN SDG 2030 agenda.
Ingrid has always valued creativity, embraced an abundant mindset, and has gained professional satisfaction from tackling vast, complex issues. She explains that before the current wave of digital and business transformation, engaging global stakeholders to adopt innovative technologies and have an ESG-conscious business strategy was difficult. Digital innovation and digital transformation are currently at the top of the agenda for forward-thinking businesses aiming to gain a competitive advantage and become web 3.0 ready. She shares that to continue growing and developing as a business leader, she remains actively involved with several global thought leadership networks such as the Forbes Business Council, Thinkers 360, Thinkers 50, and serves as an Executive Partner for GlobalReach BI. She also remains a dedicated ambassador for Women in AI, Swiss Cognitive AI, The Health Captain’s Club, the Global Council for Promotion of International Trade, and others.
Ingrid shares two quotes that she believes can catalyze women that wish to forge a career in the tech industry: “Until you spread your wings, you’ll have no idea how far you can fly”—Napoleon Bonaparte; “It always seems impossible until it’s done”—Nelson Mandela.
Addressing Major Digital Era Problems
The world is undergoing a fundamental global business and digital transition that is necessary to adapt to the digital era and can drive post-pandemic economic recovery. However, the widespread use of new technologies, as well as the hyper-connected, hyper-digitized, and hyper-virtualized world, raises cyber-security concerns. Furthermore, since they lack sophisticated cyber-defense systems, startups, scale-ups, and SMEs are particularly vulnerable to cyber-threats. She recognizes that global stakeholders must work together to encourage the development of a cyber-resilience culture that protects the privacy and increases consumer trust.
Ingrid’s vision is to offer a technology solution that addresses some of the major problems in this digital era by radically improving the privacy, security, and speed of data management in networks. Data is regarded as the 6th power in society and Softhread is proud to offer forward-looking enterprises a comprehensive zero trust solution for the digital era. She opines, “Our mission is to provide a unique technology platform that mitigates the operational, financial, ethical, and reputational risks organizations are facing due to the exponential growth of networks.”
Chios™ platform addresses major current challenges in adopting blockchains by reducing cyber-vulnerability, increasing flexibility, and scalability for enterprises that manage a high volume of confidential data. Chios™ achieves decentralized confidentiality, fine-grained access control, and robust intrusion tolerance by avoiding any single point of failure and maintaining operational efficiency.
