Dr. Johnna Powell
Managing Director and Global Head of Technology, Research and Innovation, DTCC
Dr. Johnna Powell is a Managing Director at DTCC, and Global Head of the Technology, Research and Innovation Department, where she TRI drives external and internal innovation through strategic thought leadership, enterprise-wide advocacy, collaborative sponsorship and a focus on execution. We work with senior leadership to identify business and technology challenges and drive to creative solutions.
Previously, she was the Global Co-Head of ConsenSys NFT. She worked at ConsenSys for 5 years, based in New York, and has served multiple Fortune 100 clients on product design, development and launch. Some of her work includes launching a carbon credit trading platform with a global alliance of 4 banks, and designing a securities issuance and lifecycle management platform with 10 of the largest global banks.
Under her leadership, the ConsenSys NFT team spearheaded a number of high-profile endeavors in NFT collections across industries including art, entertainment and music. This includes one of the highest-value, globally-recognized NFT projects (along with Palm and Heni): Damien Hirst - the Currency project, which achieved a $600m market cap and was 6x oversubscribed. Additionally, her team launched the second largest-ever Ethereum NFT collection, The Merge: Regenesis. Additionally, she and her team have partnered with 18+ global luxury brands (including LVMH, Prada, Cartier, and more) to launch the next wave of new utility NFTs, exploring loyalty, membership, personalization and creative user journeys. Also, in the world of global sports, Dr. Powell brought the Sports Illustrated Ticketing relationship to ConsenSys, which resulted in the development and launch of a global NFT ticketing platform, managed and delivered by her team. Additionally, she spearheaded the acquisition of Treum (a digital assets platform and creators of Eulerbeats) to ConsenSys, a groundbreaking platform in generative art & music, rights & royalties.
Johnna was previously a senior consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she focused on corporate strategy and commercial (e.g., marketing & sales optimization, go-to-market strategy) engagements. As a leader in the Pricing practice, she worked with product development teams to develop and launch pricing tools across multiple organizations.
Johnna holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from MIT, where she conducted research in millimeter-wave imaging systems and Ultra-Wideband ("5G") antennas for military applications. While at MIT, she won the IEEE International Best Paper Award for her research, along with a patent for her designs. In addition, BMW used her designs and prototypes in their Ultra-Wideband systems testing.
