Marie-Antoinette Tichler is a serial entrepreneur, social technologist and community advocate who has devoted her life to educating citizens about their Digital Legacy and respecting the power of technology.
Her experience includes creating technology based programs for underserved youth, to teach high school students technology skills that could increase technological access and decrease harm caused thru technology. Prior to C2Legacy, Marie-Antoinette created the Growing Up Mobile Program, a mobile technology program providing much needed education and access for youth, which was adopted by one of the largest youth outreach organization in the world.
While spending much of her time educating underserved youth, Marie-Antoinette has constantly educated herself about new innovating and emerging technologies.
She has spent close to a decade deeply immersed in observing and studying what new fangled innovations will and will not make teens respond. Over the years, along with the students, she has been able to experience the technology adoption, transition and massive intrusion into daily life.
And for almost a decade, she has been teaching the importance of Digital Legacy. Because of this past experience and the unexpected death of her son’s father, when learning that her entrepreneurial son was accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for his business services she knew C2Legacy had to become a service that could not only help her son, but others all over the world.
What do you love most about digital currency?
I love the potential of new digital currency millionaires. I call them “Cryptoillionaires.” They are etching out the potential of a new society right before our eyes. They are creating new wealth that can be passed to the next generation. As more and more technological theories are tested and conventional industries are transitioned and reinvented as blockchain based tokenized companies, this creates more opportunities for new people to have digital wealth.
I’m clearly biased about the idea of “LEGACY” since C2Legacy is about privately, safely and securely transferring digital assets estates, which is currently a problem.
Billions of digital dollars have been created since 2008, creating both business and personal digital assets. According to the fourth quarter report of CB Insights Blockchain Investment Trends in Review, activity and growth in the blockchain tokenized space is on the rise, and “the future is bright.”
Who do you admire most in the industry and why?
I’m fans of three female founders and their projects. Tricia Martinez, CEO & Founder of Wala is providing opportunity to the underserved with Wala coin. Her dedication to bring real solutions to help Africans have better lives is so inspiring. Tricia’s commitment to Basic Income is also impressive and I’m an advocate.
Chrissa McFarlane , CEO & Founder of Patientory which manages health information in real-time. While serving on active duty in the US Air Force I earned my BS in Healthcare and worked in Healthcare Administration for 10+ years. I’ve witness first-hand problems lost, missing or destroyed medical information can cause. I’m confident Chrissa’s blockchain-tech company will be pivotal to improving global health.
Last, Bitnation’s founder Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof. Bitnation hosted the world’s first blockchain marriage, birth certificate, refugee emergency ID, World Citizenship, and more. She’s my absolute hands down choice for the “Dopest.” I’m so impressed by the founder’s idea of nation building and creating community utopias. The decentralized jurisdiction, Pangea, for the peer-to-peer creation of voluntary nations and making and arbitrating solemn agreements is awesome. I’m excited to meet her. We’ll be integrating Bitnation’s governance in the C2Legacy LOC – Legacy Oversight Consortium token protocol.
How do you see blockchain technology improving life in the future?
If you’ve spent anytime with a Blockchain Believer you’ll be guaranteed to hear about the grassroots “Blockchain Believer Beliefs.” Decentralized v/s Centralized, Community Control vs. Government Control, Share the Code vs. Hide the Code and Transparent vs. Top Down. I think that this is what differentiates the DOT.com Bubble from the Blockchain Boom.
I believe Blockchain technology will be the single future influencer of moving to a more transparent society. In the present, blockchain and cryptocurrency has already created an entirely new era “The Crypto Era,” new industry, new wealth holders and more importantly new possibilities. New possibilities for what the future holds creates something even more special, it creates HOPE. Hope is the one intangible feeling that can actually manifest itself in tangible ways.
What’s your biggest accomplishment to date?
Instituting safe technology and digital legacy programs to increase digital opportunities and decrease incidents of death and harm for youth in over 2500 schools has been my biggest accomplishment to date.
C2Legacy is a direct result of the last decade I’ve spent educating, monitoring and observing students behavior, attitude and adaption to new technology. While being emerged in the program installation, I observed technologies which allowed for the opportunity of financial advancement or to crate commerce were far more sought after versus technologies which only provided entertainment. In general, they were in search of programs and platforms which offered the ability to create ways to make money. They were desperate to obtain technical skills that were easily transferable into the ability to become young entrepreneurs and didn’t want to work at the mall or in fast food.
With my background in mobile app development, social media, and mobile marketing I set out to solve the problem of underserved high school students having the ability to learn some technical skills that could provide the opportunity for entrepreneurship. Through the partnership of a global youth organization, we were able to offer high school students a mobile app development and social media planning technical skills program.
TOADD.org, my non-profit was used as the practice model. Together we were able to reach over 10,000 through social medial and we were able to obtain over 1 million youth pledges to use technology responsibility and protect their digital legacy. We were able to utilize the power of peer-to-peer influence while educating, encouraging and empowering students to seek out new technologies.
TOADD.org has been recognized by the Georgia State Congress and Georgia House of Representatives with an official awareness week, “Text With Respect Week” July 21-27, the Mayor of Atlanta acknowledged us as a “Safe Technology” organization and the CEO and DeKalb County Board named August 8th as Marie-Antoinette Tichler Day.
What’s your biggest pet peeve about digital currency?
I have two pet peeves that I feel in time will be corrected. First, the lack of customer service provided for the new products and services. The majority of Blockchain and cryptocurrency creators are technology developers, super techies and number crunchers actualizing an idea into a physical company. Because the Blockchain industry is still in it’s infancy the majority of the individuals involved have some comfortability with technology. The peeve is that most of the population isn’t as adaptable to this level of technology and therefore would be more comfortable with the ability to speak to someone because they are spending money. As of late, I’ve noticed a few blockchain companies that have incorporated some type of ability to communicate with the company.
My second peeve is a common one, the user experience within the platforms. Honestly, some technical instructions to complete actions put me in the #TwilightZone.
A perfect example is the upcoming B2X fork. I’ve watched 3 YouTube videos about how to protect my current Bitcoins and I’ve gotten 3 different solutions, none of them simple, by the way. For the Bitcoin newbie (or average consumer) without a technical background, this could be easily perceived as a nightmare.
In conclusion, my peeves are it’s not easy to use wallets and customer service in the industry is currently lacking.
To connect with Marie-Antoinette, be sure to check her out on LinkedIn and follow C2Legacy on Twitter and Facebook to learn more about the company’s upcoming ICO.
