SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--XYO Network, the technology bringing blockchain to the real world, continues to augment its Board of Advisors and cement its leadership position by today announcing that parent company XY – The Persistent Company has made new additions to the already-impressive Advisory Board with new and widely-regarded industry experts. Marcus Delano East, Chief Technology Officer, National Geographic; Kai Keller, Project Lead/Global Leadership Fellow, World Economic Forum; and industry expert Ken Au will support XY and XYO Network’s aggressive efforts to bridge blockchain and blockchain-based dApps to the physical world as the company builds out its applications, partners, and customer base around the globe and across industries.
2018 was an unprecedented year of successes for the XYO Network team, including growth from 17 to 76 employees; multiple corporate acquisitions; the opening of innovation-focused XY Labs in nearby Carlsbad, CA; listings on multiple new exchanges; and powerful partnerships with industry-leading organizations Esri, the FedEx Research Institute, and Spaceflight Industries.
Now, XY – The Persistent Company and the XYO team announce the newest Advisory Board members to join the team. They are industry leaders, each of whom brings a unique background, skill set, network, and set of strategic insights to the Board:
Marcus Delano East
East is Executive Vice President and
Chief Technology Officer of National
Geographic. As a technology executive with a passion for driving
change through the use of technology, he has built a global reputation
for being a “creative technologist” who enjoys solving difficult
problems in innovative ways, whether complex business challenges or
life-changing social issues. East spent much of his career working for
leading technology companies including Apple and International
Business Machines (IBM) building world-class technology, and the
other portion of his career helping brands including Comic Relief,
Marks and Spencer, and now National Geographic, to harness
the power of technology to drive business value. East is a Fellow of the
British Computer Society (BCS) Chartered Institute for Information
Technology, and a Member of the Chartered Management Institute (MCMI).
Kai Keller
Keller is currently Project
Lead and a Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum.
Keller leads the World Economic Forum’s work at the intersection of
innovation and financial stability. He works with private and public
stakeholders exploring changes in the global financial ecosystem as a
result of technology-enabled innovation, while considering the wide
range of opportunities and challenges in topics as diverse as the
appropriate use of customer data, to the future of cryptocurrency.
Before joining the World Economic Forum, Keller led equities activities
at Credit Suisse, Macquarie Capital and Daiwa Securities.
Ken Au
Au currently serves as advisor
to multiple global business, luxury brand, and technology companies
including Metaverse, China’s first public blockchain company. At
Metaverse, Au spearheads development of use cases from the ideology
stage to product launch, as well as corporate development and
partnerships. Au has forged strong relationships in traditional
technology and blockchain spaces, and has a thorough understanding of
the power and synergy from integrating the two. Additionally, Au is
co-founder of the Luxchain Foundation, which provides enterprise-level
supply chain verification solutions for the luxury goods market. In
addition to his strategic work with XYO Network, he provides high-level
advisory services to PLAIR.
As an additional development, current Advisory Board member and Smart City expert Paul Hynek will serve the Board in an expanded capacity as Chairman. Hynek holds an MBA from The Wharton School, and is currently a professor of finance at Pepperdine. Hynek also leads the Technology Committee for the $100 million effort to revitalize Pershing Square, the oldest public space in Los Angeles, and is also a member of the global-oriented Smart Cities Council. Hynek will contribute decades of business and technology insight, expertise, and leadership to the overall direction of the Advisory Board as XYO Network continues executing against its aggressive strategy around the globe and in orbit.
“These newest additions to our Advisory Board, and Paul Hynek’s stepping forward as Chairman are just the beginning of the powerful changes and growth you can expect from XYO Network in 2019,” said Scott Scheper, Co-Founder and CMO of XYO Network. “The roadmap and the team we’re putting in place to realize our goals are so aggressive and impactful in bridging blockchain, real, and virtual worlds that they’re second to none in the world. These new Advisors, and the things you’ll see from us this year, will literally blow the industry away, and we’re just getting started. A hearty welcome to these newest Advisory Board members.”
About XYO Network
XYO Network is an effort to create a vast, geospatial, blockchain-powered location network currently under development with the goal to provide accurate, certainty-driven location data on everything from cars to smartphones. By combining location beacons with IoT and mobile devices, the XYO Network ecosystem plans to deliver the verified coordinates and data needed to execute smart contracts, run smart cities, foster financial transactions, and power a legion of location-centric applications. For more information, please visit https://xyo.network.