How did I come to love Blockchain?

“For the first time in my working career both my age and gender are an advantage; I’m a woman and I’m in my fifties.”

Jillian Godsil is co-founder of Blockleaders.io and Editor in Chief. This year she was awarded 2021 Women in Leadership global award. In 2020 she was named Uptrennd.com’s Blockchain Journalist of the Year, shortlisted for the Women in Tech TrailBlazer award, listed on the Wirex/Fintech Strong Women of Crypto and featured in the UK Crypto Curry Club 101 women of Blockchain.

In 2019 she was named one of the top 100 people globally in blockchain by Lattice, awarded the CC Foum Blockchain Journalist of the year and was nominated for a national Irish radio award for her EastCoastFM show.

She has been featured in Al Jazeera, Russia Today, BBC2 Newsnight, UK Telegraph, RTE, TV3, Huffington Post, New York Times, The Irish Times, Vogue Italia and the Irish Independent amongst others.

She is a freelance journalist for the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and many more broadsheets and business publications. She is Editor in Chief of Liberland Press and has been awarded the Order of Merit by the President of Liberland.

She is an advisor for a number of companies working in the Blockchain industry. Prior to COVID19 she travelled the world speaking and chairing Blockchain conferences in Kiev, Austin, Muscat, Columbo. Dublin, Dubai, Vienna, London, Malta, Capetown, and many other cities. She advocates for women in blockchain.

She is a genesis writer on the recently launched VOICE platform. She has published a book on Persons of Interest – vol 1 is out now https://persons-of-interest.io/

However, five years ago she was evicted from her rented accommodation with her two adult children. She had no job and no income. She found a tiny cottage for her two girls to rent and went couchsurfing with a friend.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/i-call-it-couchsurfing-but-really-i-m-homeless-1.2746226

What on earth? Let me tell you a story…

In 2008 Jillian had hit divorce and recession. She could not cope with both.

Previously she had travelled the world (London, Sydney and Singapore) for work before relocating to the Irish countryside with her family. She ran a successful PR business. There had a large mortgage on her country house (half the value of the house). With the divorce, her ex husband went back to the UK and went bankrupt, thereby giving the entire mortgage debt to Jillian and her two girls.

In 2008 there was a hard crash happening in property prices. She tried to sell the house and made a video that went viral. She got a cash offer of €500,000 but the bank refused consent to sell as the mortgage was more. They preferred to repossess the home and sell it for €165,000 the following year. (It is now back on the market three years later at €550,000)

In the interim she became politicised. She lost her business and it collapsed, bailiffs called to the door and she lost everything. But she also became aware of the false narrative that began to take shape - “that people were gaming the system and messing with moral hazard”. There were also a rising number of financially inspired suicides. She got angry. She got very angry.

So she started ranting and raving at every opportunity - and she had a lot. This was around 2012 and most people were still ‘shamed’ at failing financially. She went loud and proud and said that while it hurt a lot to lose everything that she had done nothing wrong and was not ashamed.

In the end, she was the first female bankrupt under the new insolvency laws in 2014. She was not allowed to run for public office under archaic Victorian law. She then took the Irish government to the High Court and all the way to the Supreme Court claiming that her constitutional rights were being infringed. She won.

Then she had to run - after all she had won the right.

So, Jillian ran in the European Parliamentary elections in 2014 and while she did not win a seat she earned 11,500 votes.

This is where blockchain came in. She been through the ringer and was hung out to dry. She thought that life could offer her no more. She was at a standstill - or worse a personal recession.

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/want-to-feel-invisible-try-hunting-for-a-job-at-50-31195113.html

THEN SHE MET BLOCKCHAIN in September 2017 and she said to herself – “Mama I’ve come home. Now is my time to shine.”

For more information, visit https://jilliangodsil.com/