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Call for Applications for DLT TALENTS: an 18-week mentoring program to empower female talent for leadership in the blockchain space

Frankfurt School Blockchain Center
10 min readMay 2, 2024

We have designed an 18-week long program with 3 phases that will help women onboard to the blockchain ecosystem. Our goal is to guide the way for women to become entrepreneurs, technologists, regulators, investors, and/or multiplicators. This program is free of charge (EUR 0), you just have to apply. We will admit a maximum of 200 women to this program, starting on April 21, 2025. Application Deadline is March 30, 2025.

If you need an overview of the application deadline and starting dates, go to our Website: https://web3-talents.io/dlt-talents

Introduction

DLT Talents, launched in 2020, is part of the wider Web3 Talents education initiative operated by Frankfurt School Blockchain Center. With this program, we seek to empower women to get into blockchain technology, become leaders in this quickly developing field, and build the basis for a successful career path. Blockchain is here to change the infrastructures of finance, supply chains, trade, etc. First, implementations are conducted by large corporations and financial institutions, but also by NGOs, the UN, and others trying to be part of a changing world. Bitcoin will also stay with us for the next few years and will not fade away. It is time to onboard yourself into the blockchain ecosystem.

Here is our track record so far: Close to 3.400 talented women have applied; Of these, we have mentored 1200 talents in 8 batches between 2020 and 2024. After these women have passed our 18-week mentoring program, many of them are ready for jobs in the blockchain space. So far, approximately 500 women have found such a job. From now on in 2024 and beyond, we will increase these numbers. We are grateful to our sponsors: KfW, DekaBank, DWP Bank, and Commerzbank for making this possible.

We envision that young women passing through our program, sooner or later, can follow these career paths:

  • You become an entrepreneur of a great blockchain startup that is quickly funded with more than EUR 1M.
  • You become a technologist or developer, ready to work on blockchain applications or token protocols.
  • You become a regulator or lawyer, to help change or apply the rules on which a digital society will be based on in the future.
  • You become an investor or venture capital partner, to help shape the future of other startups.
  • You become a multiplicator or influencer in the blockchain area and an important “node” of the network.

If we do not achieve these goals together with some of the women we will coach, we will have failed.

Blockchain is 95% male and this has to change

Blockchain is a rising area. It emerged with Bitcoin back in 2008, pure software and IT. Of course, blockchain is a technology often combined with finance. Maybe this is the reason why the blockchain space is dominated by men in most countries. In fact, 95% of the people in blockchain are men. To be clear, this is just 5% of women — probably less.

We think that this is a significant problem in this quickly developing technological field. The time is now to be present, to position yourself, and to build a network. The network and the prototypes developed now will lay the foundation for essential business relationships and real-life projects in a couple of years.

You will be one of the first protagonists in this field. Mingling with future leaders now will make this point in time the perfect one to start.

It is our goal to change this on a small scale.

Who is operating this program?

This program is operated by Frankfurt School Blockchain Center and partnering organizations. If you are interested as an organization in supporting this program, please contact us. Precisely, this is the core team driving this endeavor:

  • Daniel Holk, Project Manager at Frankfurt School Blockchain Center
  • Valentin Kalinov, Project Manager at Frankfurt School Blockchain Center
  • Constantin Lichti, Project Manager at Frankfurt School Blockchain Center
  • Marc Anders, Head of Web3 Talents at Frankfurt School Blockchain Center
  • Manuel Müller, Partnerships Manager at Frankfurt School Blockchain Center

Founding Members of DLT Talents

The DLT Talents Program was set up by the following people who have made it their goal to make Web3 and blockchain more equal:

In our bi-weekly Zoom sessions, we will invite other blockchain experts. For this, we have built the following network of current (and past) guest speakers:

What can you expect from our DLT TALENTS program?

Starting with our 9th batch on April 21, 2025, we will establish a small program, select a maximum of 200 high-potential women, and coach them over the course of a 3-phase 18-week program to become entrepreneurs, technologists, regulators, investors and/or multiplicators in this field. Every two weeks, we will hold Zoom sessions to deepen your knowledge and get you ready for a first job in the blockchain domain.

This program is different. We will not mentor the classical way and we will not lecture. This is successfully done elsewhere. With our stringent 3-phase program, we will focus on empowering women to build a footprint in the blockchain ecosystem and become entrepreneurs, technologists, regulators, investors and/or multiplicators in this field.

These are the key principles of our program:

  • You are your own teacher. We want to empower participants to learn the basics of the technology through using blended learning concepts built upon peer learning. This is NOT a university lecture. We will facilitate the learning journey by providing you with a diligently curated study guide. It’s important that you commit to self-studying the proposed concepts and come prepared to our joint Zoom sessions.
  • Sharing is caring. In the Zoom sessions, we will deepen the knowledge and clarify open questions. We will ask you to actively share your learnings and questions in these sessions, to foster learning through guided individual and group reflection and sharing of our perspectives towards a common topic. It is key to apply your newly won knowledge with a “Just do it” mentality.
  • Content is queen. We will ask you to become a blockchain co-creator, e.g., by writing a blog article or creating a video on a blockchain topic (e.g., on Medium or YouTube), and get public exposure. We want to foster execution. But no worries, we will assure that what you write will be brilliant! We ask to do so because we have made the experience that by “owning” one’s topic, the study journey deepens and accelerates.

Why should you apply for this program?

Enter into Blockchain. This program should allow you to get an easy entry into the blockchain ecosystem. We believe that this program strongly improves your employability and significantly benefits your future career path.

Structured Learning Journey. You will also be equipped with the knowledge to understand blockchain technology and to judge applications of crypto assets and DLT. You will be able to “access” this very special domain with extremely varying characters — from entrepreneurs to regulators, investors, and corporates. Our learning guides and facilitated peer sessions are designed in a way to help you understand the core essentials in a short time period. Our guest speakers are experts in their own fields in the blockchain universe.

Thriving network. Finally, we will provide a network and contacts to professionals in the blockchain domain. This is of particular importance because in such a small and dynamic field, the breadth and depth of one’s personal network are key.

It is a blockchain “bootcamp”. Please only consider applying if you are up to the challenge. We are waiting for your application. Shortly outline what brought your attention to blockchain and why you are the right woman.

What exactly does the program look like?

We aim to develop the participants into specialists in a chosen domain. To achieve this, however, it is necessary to learn the basics of the technology and also to gain insight into as many stakeholder domains as possible. To achieve this, we have developed a 3-phase model, which forms the backbone of the entire program — the basics phase, the multi-disciplinary phase, and, ultimately, the concentration phase (see Figure 1). These phases accompany the participants from the beginner level (basics phase) upwards to the generalist (multi-disciplinary phase) and specialist levels (concentration phase).

Figure 1: DLT TALENTS’ 3-phase program over the course of 18 weeks to empower women

We meet every two weeks virtually as a group. These meetings last 90 minutes, and they are meant to help share our learnings, discuss open questions, and learn from experts in the field. We will ask you to come prepared to the meetings.

Table 1: Program schedule

What is the agenda for each Zoom session?

Each Zoom session will have the following structure and will each have a length of 90 minutes:

  • Warm welcome (5 min)
  • Industry news (10 min)
  • Participant presentations in breakout rooms (25 min)
  • Reflections from the group (10 min)
  • Assignment for next session (5 min)
  • Guest speaker presentations, if scheduled (20 min)
  • Q&A (10 min)
  • Outlook next topics (5 min)

In each Zoom session, the participants will present the findings of the assignment from the last session. The goal is not to lecture content to others. The goal is mainly to showcase what you have learned and what insights you have gotten — we call these “reflections”. Specifically, the participants should present their insights. They should not teach others. Learning of content is being done in the assignments the participants have to work on alone. The reflections will follow a structured format:

  • Please share your key insight from the topic covered. What have you learned that you didn’t know before? What was fascinating about it?
  • Why is the topic you investigated important, or innovative to the industry? What problem was solved? How will this change our current economic system?
  • What are the potential drawbacks or hindrances?
  • Where do you have open questions?

After the participant presentations, we will discuss the patterns that occurred, regarding the insights of the entire group. The goal is to deepen and enrich our mutual understanding of the topic at hand. Thereafter, the assignment for the next session will be presented. All participants will work in one joint Google Slides document. Link sharing will be turned on and everybody will work on their slides within this single joint document. We do this to foster knowledge exchange and reduce technical friction when presenting. We then have guest lecturers by guests invited by us. Questions on their presentations will be discussed thereafter. Each session closes with an outlook toward the new section.

What are the key characteristics of the DLT TALENTS program to be summarized?

  • Starting: Monday, April 21, 2025 (Cohort 9) The sessions start at 17:30 CEST/CET.
  • Duration: 18 weeks (ending August 25, 2025).
  • Working mode: bi-weekly Zoom sessions with assignments to be worked on in the meantime.
  • Hours of classes: in the afternoons (CEST/CET).
  • Cost: EUR 0 (scholarship program).
  • Size: maximum of 200 women.
  • Application: required (written).
  • Language: English

Who should apply for this program and where to apply?

You should definitely apply if you fulfill the following criteria:

  • You are female.
  • Your age is 18+.
  • You have at least 12 free hours per week to dig into the area of blockchain.
  • You love technology and ideally also finance.
  • You are good at mathematics.
  • You have already held leadership experiences in your life (can be in extra-curricular).
  • You could imagine slightly touching programming and IT development.
  • It is OK for you to speak up for your interests and in public.
  • You are entrepreneurial-minded.
  • You are eager to fulfill the milestones of the program with a “the best I can do”-attitude.
  • You seek to comply with the deadlines given.
  • You give your best to attend every single session of our schedule (every second Monday starting on April 21, 2025; starting at approximately 17:30 CEST/CET.

If you have decided to apply, simply apply via this application form (you will need to upload a motivation letter and CV as a PDF file for the application; a Gmail address is also required). In case you have questions, please contact us via email: Julia.rotstein@web3-talents.io- we will respond to you as soon as possible. The program starts on April 21, 2025, and will consist of a maximum of 200 ambitious women. The application deadline is March 30, 2025; 23:59 CEST/CET.

Dlt Talents
Call For Applications
Blockchain
Dlt
Web3

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Frankfurt School Blockchain Center

Written by Frankfurt School Blockchain Center

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