Photo by Wyatt McSpadden

After immigrating to the United Kingdom in the late 1960s to escape the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, Stella Dyer (MBA 1994) and her family lived in public housing and had very little money. “But we still had more than our friends and relatives back home,” she recalls. “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.”

Fast-forward to 2020 and the pandemic, when Dyer again saw a system badly in need of updating, with existing payment networks extracting big fees from individuals and merchants despite sharp declines in cash use and other major disruptions to small businesses and personal livelihoods.

Enter Millicent, the blockchain-based digital financial venture Dyer cofounded a year ago. Both a financial network and a social impact venture, Millicent tracks Dyer’s own career, which includes a career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and several private equity firms, where she held C-suite positions. Feeling disillusioned, she left for the charity sector for a number of years, where she worked until her friend and cofounder Kene Ezeji-Okoye approached her with an idea for a low-cost, blockchain-based financial network that would serve some of the estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide who live mostly cut off from financial services.

Dyer says Millicent’s payments network will be a purpose-built blockchain that features low fees, sub two-second settlement, and an eco-friendly consensus algorithm. She says they have also tested the first public stablecoin backed entirely by cash.

“Our mission is for everyone in the world to experience the benefits of a truly digital financial ecosystem,” she explains. “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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