Tricia Martínez is the Managing Director of the Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator. She is an experienced serial entrepreneur, executive, and activist passionate about driving large-scale impact through technology and innovation.

Named top 20 founders of color, Hispanic Entrepreneur of the Year, top 100 Fintech leaders creating impact, and 100 most influential people in cryptocurrency. Her experience ranges from cash transfer solutions in Africa to small business microfinance, to the development of an investment fund for underserved markets. Tricia is also an alumna of the London Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars participating in the 2016 program with her blockchain-enabled financial services platform, Wala.

Her most recent company, Wala, enables consumers to move money anywhere instantly at no cost through a blockchain solution. With her background in behavioral economics, Tricia decided to take a different approach to financial inclusion and began testing incentives models as a means to influence financial behavior. From there, Wala was born.

Prior to Wala, Tricia designed a cash transfer system that provided universal basic income to subsistence farmers in Uganda as an extreme poverty alleviation intervention. While spending her career in the financial inclusion space working directly with consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa, Tricia has been exposed to the deeply rooted complexities and barriers in the financial systems. Tricia completed her Master of Public Policy with a concentration in Behavioral Economics from the University of Chicago.