In 2023 and 2024, I was Chief Information Officer at BLOCKSIZE until I left the company.

As an expert for IT change, I love working together with people. When I joined BLOCKSIZE at the beginning of 2022 as Head of DeFi/Node Operations it was clear that the role would hold a number of challenges. During my time at BLOCKSIZE, I successfully managed to build and grow the DeFi and node operations team. Our team’s biggest achievements during that time were to professionally grow the Chainlink infrastructure on two continents, implement cost cutting measures, as well as to successfully launch a new digital assets market data product called BLOCKSIZE CONNECT.

During my time at BLOCKSIZE, I have been in contact with a large number of market players especially from the TradFi space as well as blockchain companies. It turned out that there are still many business opportunities to be grasped and here at BLOCKSIZE we have the manpower and skills necessary to provide such solutions. The current and upcoming challenges are not just technical ones. Especially strategic goal setting, product marketing, and the operational side to achieve the necessary steps are criticial for success: Only the right people can provide the right products in the right time for the right target audience.

In the past I have designed and implemented a wide range of IT projects. Thanks to my leadership experiences, technical knowledge, and track record at BLOCKSIZE, I was appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO) with the company starting on January 1, 2023.

Very concrete components of my duties were:

• leading the company with energy, empathy, and resilience
• create digital products in the financial space
• understand and describe great technical complexity in simple words
• development, communication, and implementation of the product vision
• disciplinary management of business-critical teams
• responsibility for budgets and the management of information technology
• focus on growth
• …

As a Chief Information Officer, you have to use various hard and soft skills to be able to assert yourself in this job. At a very basic level, CIOs need to know how to run a business because the job requires a lot of knowledge about it. CIOs should also be aware of technology trends as IT can change in two to three years. This type of person needs to build relationships with other executives within the organization and with peers in the field.

A CIO needs to know how each department of a company works to determine the technical needs of each business line, and this person needs to excel at communication. The ability to translate technical terms in a way that non-IT staff can easily understand is critical. A CIO oversees a range of data-related functions to ensure an organization is making the most of its most valuable assets. The typical work of a chief information officer includes areas such as data quality, data governance, data stewardship, information strategy, data science, and business analytics. The Chief Information Officer’s responsibilities include, but are not limited to: disseminating and communicating a product vision as a critical component of the growth strategy; creating strategic data access policies; lead the design of analytics infrastructure; development and implementation of a central data strategy to increase sales; overseeing data governance, data investments and partnerships; and strategy development with C-level colleagues and managing directors; and more.

Alongside these more formal business-related goals, my job also involves leading the company to successfully design, launch, and commercialize financial data products in relation to DeFi. I worked for BLOCKSIZE until October 2024.