As the Nigeria-Biafra war raged around them, Stella Dyer (MBA 1994), her mother, and her brother made a dangerous dash for a better life. Huddled in the belly of a Portuguese cargo plane returning from delivering arms to the Biafran forces, Dyer remembers Nigerian soldiers shooting at the aircraft as it took off. Once they landed in the United Kingdom in the dead of winter, the family found themselves with nothing, shivering in their summer clothes.

“We lived in public housing and had very little money, but we still had more than our friends and relatives back home,” Dyer says. But their attempts to help those who remained there, she remembers, were undermined by the cumbersome money-transfer rails of the 1970s. “My mother would try to send over what little money she could spare, but the system made it nearly impossible, with terrible fees and long delays. Often the payments couldn’t be made at all.”

Fast-forward to 2020 and the pandemic, when Dyer and her friend, entrepreneur Kene Ezeji-Okoye, again saw a system badly in need of updating. Existing payment networks were extracting big fees from individuals and merchants, despite sharp declines in cash use and other major disruptions to small businesses and personal livelihoods. “For many small businesses, that meant tough times got even tougher, which inspired us to look for alternative solutions that put people first,” Dyer says.

Ezeji-Okoye asked Dyer, who had worked as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and held C-suite roles with several large private equity firms, for help with an idea that would eventually become Millicent, their blockchain-based digital financial venture. Dyer says Millicent’s payments network will be a purpose-built system that features low fees, and sub two-second settlement, all while requiring less computational power and using far less energy than many current blockchains. Dyer says they have also tested the first public stablecoin (a cryptocurrency that has its value pegged to a commodity or currency or its supply regulated by an algorithm) backed entirely by cash, which is held by a regulated third party in a segregated account.

“Holding 100 percent liquid collateral for our stablecoins eliminates any risk of a bank run, which is something no other provider can claim,” she notes.

As the cryptocurrency sector has been engulfed in turmoil in 2022, Dyer has advocated for more regulation, which hasn’t necessarily endeared her to other players in the space. But she says it’s necessary to bridge the gap between the blockchain sector and traditional financial networks—and to ultimately use the technology to afford the estimated 1.7 billion unbanked people across the world access to affordable financial services. Dyer says the United Nations has identified digital financial inclusion as a key catalyst for global sustainable development goals, and her aspiration is that Millicent, which is based in London and co-funded by the British government’s Research and Innovation Department, “will play a significant role in accelerating this worldwide advancement.”

Dyer’s focus on social mission also tracks the evolution of her career. Driven by her family’s financial instability early in her life, she set out on a career in finance and enrolled at HBS in the mid-1990s. She chose HBS because of its Socratic approach. At first she was intimidated by the cold calls, she concedes, but quickly came to appreciate being immersed in “learning from and absorbing the diverse experiences of some of the world’s brightest minds.”

Dyer’s financial career was principally in investment banking, but today notes that fundamental inequities in the world of finance—which the prosperous can navigate with ease are nearly impossible for those who are not wealthy—always nagged at her. Disillusioned, Dyer left finance altogether to raise her son and to work in the charity sector, volunteering for a national breast cancer foundation and within her local community, often with her son in tow. She returned to finance in 2015, but her heart wasn’t in it.

That’s when businessman and philanthropist Robert F. Smith approached her about his plan to donate $20 million to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Smith’s plan included developing an Explore Your Family History Center, which would help people explore their family history and learn the basics of researching African-American genealogy. The center opened in 2016, and as leader of its Community Curation outreach program, Dyer spoke to Black leaders and community members, who enthusiastically embraced the project. “The immense joy I felt, from everyone I spoke to, had a lasting impact on me,” she recalls. “It crystalized the desire to devote my time and energy to building projects that create lasting positive impacts on people.”

Enter Millicent: The company is now just over a year old, and even though there is a long road ahead, Dyer says she has big hopes that it can bring financial empowerment to people around the world who badly need it. “Our mission is for everyone to experience the benefits of a truly digital financial ecosystem,” she says. “It’s a lofty—and maybe even audacious—goal, but I truly believe that Millicent has the power to effect change on a global level.”

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