Rena Tabal

Director of Product Management, Financial & Blockchain Technology

BluePallet

Please meet this week’s WOTW, Rena Tabal. Rena joined us from Toronto where she is the Director of Product Management, Financial and Blockchain Technologies at BluePallet. Prior to joining BluePallet in March 2021, she worked in the Financial Services sector for roughly ten years. She has now been with the company for a year and a half. She discusses her various positions with the large banks in Canada and the UK and the majority of her time was spent in the area of risk management. Her responsibilities in these roles included identifying and reducing risks from financial crime activities, business advisory, consulting, and internal auditing. She describes that as her career working in big banking evolved, she came to the realization that she felt like a cog in a massive system and the culture wasn't for her any longer. She changed directions in her career during Covid-19, quit her job in Banking, and enrolled in a course in Financial Technology. Soon after, she discovered BluePallet, met the organization's founder, and decided to make the pivot after learning of their culture.

Rena talks to us about her experiences working in the Chemical and Banking industries, two traditionally male-dominated fields. With the exception of industry conferences, she had never personally experienced male dominance in either industry. She felt a little shielded from the difficulties that people might encounter in a traditionally male-dominated environment because she had so many intelligent, powerful, fearless, female leaders. Rena goes into greater detail about BluePallet's product, scope, and their goals for the future of the Chemical industry. She talks specifically to some applications of blockchain in the Chemical industry including advantages and disadvantages and potential use cases of adopting blockchain. She discusses barriers to entry such as the expenses and resources associated with the potential wide adoption of Blockchain Technology in the Chemical Industry. In wrapping up, Rena gives us a podcast recommendations called “All In” and “Huberman Labs,” the latter being a professor of neuroscience at Stanford who provides science backed tools for enhancing everyday living. 

This episode was sponsored by: