(bright music)
Hello everyone.
Jess Steinbrook here
with Invisible Disabilities Association,
and we are here for the InVisible InCourage Program,
and I'm so honored and blessed today
to have Bianca Lopes with me.
Hello, Bianca.
How are you doing?
I'm great, Jess.
I'm honored and grateful as well.
Yes, and she did reveal to me that,
she's in an area where it's dark for six months at a time,
so, we wanna lift her up,
give her a little bit of light in the conversation here.
Bianca, I know a little bit about you
and again, we've talked briefly about some of your passions
and business background,
but I really want you to describe kind of,
how you grew up a little bit,
where it led you to and why you are who you are today
as far as how people see you as as a business leader.
And then we'll get into some deeper discussions,
about passion.
How's that?
Sounds good.
So, I'm from Brazil originally.
I was raised in Rio by my parents,
who were both doctors
who I would say have dealt with their fair share
of visible and invisible disabilities,
through their growing up.
I grew up with a grandmother
who was probably my greatest hero, who has polio.
And when I was one of the first women,
an interesting thing that she told me
that I'll never forget is that she wore pants,
because she had scars
and she had to wear equipment under her,
like legs and stuff.
And back in the day she wore pants
and then she divorced my grandfather because he was cheating
and kicked him outta the house.
So she's like, I wear pants, I'm divorced
and I'm a mother of four.
So, that's how I grew up with a family of lots of people,
lots of love,
lots of different levels of visible
and invisible disabilities.
So, it was kind of always there for me.
I ended up,
I wanted to be an actress when I was a child.
And I think it was like,
because I had some sort of need for attention maybe.
But one thing I used to say as a child,
getting quite personal here,
but one thing I used to say as a child is
it used to come from my lungs
that my purpose came from my lungs,
it came from the air that I breathe.
So, as I kind of went through life,
I look at it as I've made a lot of intentional choices
that led me to who people will Google on LinkedIn
and see who they are,
who I am perceived today.
I started at a very young age,
wanting to go pursue education abroad,
because I knew my path.
I had this, I had bought into the American Dream
and I wanted to go study abroad.
So, at the bold age of 17,
I picked up my things and I left and went to Canada.
My English was pretty poor at the time.
I spoke really great French
and I moved to Vancouver to go to school
and spent the past then 12 years in Canada,
started as wanting to be a diplomat.
So, I took this idea that an actress could travel
and meet people to,
I'm gonna be a diplomat and change the world,
and fight world hunger
and get the people off the streets in Brazil.
That it was really common for me to see
as a child growing up,
but I have never become accustomed to it,
which kind of talks a little bit of a purpose there too.
Yeah, I went from that,
sorry.
I think from, well, from a personality standpoint,
I don't think you should ever be comfortable
with homelessness and things like that.
No, so I hear you.
I agree.
I think that the suffering of anybody else
as a humankind should be our bar
to have we become so numb that we are living life not awake.
And I think my process has been of me slowly waking up
to find this authentic true self.
Like today, I'm a professional in identity and data.
Today I'm a co-founder of a company called Tale.
The company tells stories and it has a pause symbol.
And I actually started the company two years ago,
and one of our clients, which is HSBC,
said to me, "They're like, did you quite literally mean it?"
I was like, "Yeah, it might have been manifesting so hard
"that it put the whole world in pause."
And it was interesting because our manifesto
and what we wrote is that I had spent the past 10 years,
before starting Talle two years ago,
working in the financial services industry.
So, working between technologists, legislators,
like regulators and the bank.
I had been a banker for years
and then I had run as the CIO of a biometric company,
which is where I found identity,
the definition of identity on a technical front.
And I realized that people had no idea
what any of them meant.
All of us spoke this beautiful gibberish
and it was almost from this place of fundamental fear.
And hey, I believe fear is a good thing.
It teaches you things.
It's trying to tell you something,
but it shouldn't define you.
And it defines the industry because we've never advanced.
So, when I started Talle,
I started with the purpose of saying,
financial services did a pretty crap job
at explaining to people money, I think.
I think as a society,
we've at a deep core level failed at explaining to people
how the unit of value was to be dictating their lives
and including them or excluding them.
And I look at technology as this new unit of value
or potential for breaking barriers that if not explained,
if not understood at a deep, non-complicated human level,
it won't serve its full purpose.
It's almost like somebody who spends their whole life
in fear and not understanding
and doesn't live to their true potential.
I genuinely think that.
So, my entire company brings,
what I say, the two sides of the brain.
We have half creative team and a half technical team.
So, we take the technical stuff that's really hard,
like data, identity, cryptography,
and we explain in a very creative, human,
empathetic, real way.
And that's how most people will have seen me,
through the videos and through the content that we create
with that purpose in mind
of how do I reconnect people back to this thing,
called technology and not scare them,
which I think a lot of things do today.
Thanks for sharing all of that.
And what I love about it is, again, having,
where I was drawn to speak
and meet with you really was,
a few weeks ago you had kind of put out this passionate,
I'm gonna call it the,
we can't settle for the new normal talk.
I hate the new normal.
There's nothing normal.
You're exactly right.
There's nothing normal about this.
There's nothing normal.
We need to just stop calling it normal.
And if it is normal, can we just not do that again?
Because that wasn't okay.
That didn't land us new way.
I'm glad, you watched the video.
Yeah.
So, that was a very powerful statement
that again drew me to getting together with you to say,
there's so much passion
and I love the way that what you've done
is you've really taken your passion
and connected it to this experience and life force,
if you will, that has driven you through,
all of these big business things.
I mean, banks and the biometrics
and I mean, literally crucial critical things
that will impact our culture completely.
And yet there's this other side that you're seeing
that's the most important side
of the human interaction on that.
Yeah.
And so, I mean, why,
and I mean, your conversation about,
we need financial literacy.
Oh my gosh, yes, we do.
Yeah.
Yeah, yes, okay?
Oh my gosh, we still do it wrong, yep.
Yeah and again, my question to you is how can I help?
I mean, I don't know if you know my other background is,
if you look and here's the,
you talked about the Google search thing.
I try not to Google search.
I really don't.
I wanna meet in-person and I wanna do this is.
As a matter of fact, if I get on the phone with somebody,
the first thing I'll say is,
please, let's not Google each other.
Let's just have coffee and hang out
and do it the old fashioned way, right?
Because I enjoy this,
but sometimes you can't help yourself of,
oh my gosh and this whole thing pours out.
Well, a lot of people know me for my movies, my media.
I mean, I have eight Emmy Awards,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I don't brag about that.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I love it.
You call it blah, blah, blah.
Call it soup letter.
It's great.
It's soup letters, that's very funny.
It's like a bunch of like accolades.
It's like drop the accolades.
Like who are you as the human being?
Yes, exactly.
You collected those things, but like, who are you?
Well, and I really see it as those are bonus items
that help me open doors
to go have the conversations I want to have.
And so that's kind of how I look at you is that
what great experience that you have leveraged into tale
to be able to create and craft stories
in such a way that changed people's lives.
And so that's why I want to go kind of now
is why and how do we get through this thing,
given the differences that sometimes we think are important.
And really, I mean,
talk to me about that from your standpoint.
How we get through life
or how we get through making that change,
is that the question?
A little of both.
Yeah, I mean,
it's gonna come from your personal side
of why it's so important to you now?
And then yes, how do we get to that place
from what you've seen in the industry and interacting.
I mean, you have a global citizenship to you
that many people don't have.
I mean, some people, if I lived in Philly,
I lived in Philly for a long time.
And it took me a while to break out of there, right?
So, but you have this different thing.
So, from that experience, yes,
how do we look at things differently to allow ourselves
to understand and change in a good way?
Here's my hope
and here's how I have been trying
to govern the relationships and the things I invest in.
So, I'm vibing in the same sort of frequency
as the people that believe in that,
'cause I think that that's powerful.
That's almost like reaction, right?
That has an ignite an ignition capacity.
As you've mentioned,
I've been super privileged to have worked
and have lived in completely different cultures,
countries and seen the deep embedded values
of some of those countries.
The deep embedded legislation
that surrounds a particular country
that maybe sometimes people don't realize that,
it maybe is why things are the way they are
or maybe it's a part of why things are the way they're,
I think the first thing I hope is that,
pausing during this pandemic has made us realize
how connected we truly are.
Not in the,
here's the FinTech or the technology trend number 102,
Uber connectivity, blah.
Like, that's not what I mean.
I'm not talking about that and all the APIs and all that.
I'm talking about the fact that
if you make a bad move or if you infect somebody,
what is the chain reaction of that?
I think we've been reminded at a human level,
what is the impact of our lives.
And what I hope for is that has ignited a fire
that has long been awake,
but sort of dead and dormant inside of all of us,
of being able to see things from what they are.
You're in the states,
obviously we've seen how polarized your country is
from so many perspectives,
but we've also seen people finally see other people
and have conversations like Black Lives Matters,
because we are finally saying,
"Hey, we haven't seen this.
"We haven't heard it enough, and we need to hear it,
"because that human, whether they're a Black person,
"a disabled person, or a whomever person,
"however you identify,"
I think is at the core of where we need to be
to make any change.
And I see that on in the financial services sector,
which is kind of a mini representation
of an ecosystem, right?
If you look at a big bank,
they have their silos.
They have their,
they're divided.
They have their own kingdoms and their own interests,
and they often don't speak to each other
or communicate properly.
And that's why it's gonna get,
that's why the death of them is eminent.
That's why things like FinTech are coming about,
because it's just proving that people right next to you,
when they communicate,
when they see each other,
when they have a diverse perspective to create a product,
they get further.
It's not to say that the people in the bank
are not capable of it,
but if they don't realize that they're a unit
and a functioning organism,
not the sum of its parts,
which I think is that,
and I think it's just like,
it's so almost religious and basic,
and you call it from any religion
you would read this,
about sort of people being able to see the other person
and see the other human there is there.
I think that's at the core of what I do
and what I believe in.
And it pours into what I do by the fact
that I don't genuinely think
when you put your hand in a pillow,
whether you're the CEO of Swift,
that you care and remember what API
or standard description was given to you.
You remember the people that touched you along the way,
the stories you've heard.
And that's my contribution to this unity,
to this being seen, being heard, being appreciated.
And I think it's just like, we've messed that up pretty bad.
We've messed that up pretty bad in society.
And the influencer crap is just even worse.
Like, it's just, we've messed it up pretty bad.
Well, and it's interesting.
I mean, that's a great segue
to the conversation of invisible disabilities
because yes, so many people don't have a voice,
or when they try to have a voice,
they're not heard, they're not believed.
That's a big thing that we deal with all the time.
And so until somebody actually believes that
you're dealing with something that you can't see
and it is very detrimental and difficult to get through
for whatever reason, chronic pain or chronic illness
or whatever it is,
how do we engage in the networks
that don't accept those kinds of things?
How do we break through that?
I mean, you and I have talked about,
and I'll ask you too straight up,
but from an identity standpoint,
you as an identity expert,
you've seen the IDs and the cards that we do
that are worldwide and start this conversation of
how can I help if it's just given a seat on a bus
or I know my neighbor has something
and they're older and I'm gonna go into the grocery store,
what can I pick up for you kind of a thing.
How do you see that?
How do we engage that?
I mean, I'm gonna take your analogies of,
we need to pause, but what's next?
How do you open that next door of what's happening?
And why is this so important?
I think its is important
for which I can't see a future without us solving that.
I see a very ugly future.
I see a very filled with hate on barrier
and is so less rich than it could be.
And I think that's what bothers me.
It's like if only we could just co-exist,
like a forest ecosystem does.
Like look how gorgeous it is.
Like look how diverse it is.
Look how there's enough for everybody.
So, that's why I think it's important.
How?
I don't know.
I think like things like this,
honestly, I think they might seem,
sometimes to business people often seem small.
And to me is the change in every person that gets touched
by something we said today,
something that ignites in that person
is gonna be the catalyst for that change.
As an identity expert,
I think your card is a great step in the right direction.
I think there is a lot of,
what I would urge is that the fashion industry,
gets involved.
What I would urge
is that the cryptography industry gets involved
and says, how can I put this sort of verifiable credential
or self attributed credential of my invisible disability
on a payment transaction
or on a whatever sort of certification
and authentication, which is the identity space I live in,
is how can you prove you are you online?
How can you prove you have an invisible disability?
Who gets to say who that invisible disability is?
The reason why I said the fashion industry
is because I would think about,
I don't wanna wear a card,
because I don't like wearing any cards.
So, but I'm probably not the only one.
And how can the fashion industry
and people that are creative
and given a gift donate that gift
to something that clearly needs it?
I think that's the start of that change.
I think what you're doing is the start of that.
And then I think what we're gonna have to work on is,
empowering people to own their narrative because,
and breaking those barriers
of how those narratives are perceived.
We won't be able to control people's reaction.
We won't be able to control our own, unfortunately.
But I think a lot of us don't share that openly.
We don't share whatever invisible disability we have,
because we're afraid.
We're afraid of being seen and what that could mean.
I think we're afraid of the repercussions
on our work or on our worth.
And we all seem to forget that we were born worthy.
That we are so worthy of,
we have the birthright to anything,
to everything as long as we're not hiring another person.
And I think these labels have come with a price.
And I often question
if the rule of identity is to label everything,
and how far do you label?
Who has the right to label?
Well, and that's a scary conversation
that we have in dealing with talking about IDs,
especially at the legislative level or something like that.
I mean, frankly,
and I ask these questions specifically of you,
because I think there's a generational difference.
Like, I wanna know your opinion.
You wanna know why?
Because I think differently.
I grew up in a different time.
It's the same thing.
I remember my grandfather was in World War II
as a merchant marine, and he never talked about it.
Nobody ever heard any stories.
And yet when he and I would hang out for some reason,
I could you get him to tell me the stories?
Yeah, yeah.
I was the guy.
That was the same with me.
She tells me the stories, I love it.
I'm so privileged.
And it's probably why both of us have recognized
the value of stories
and how that generational passing on can change.
I mean, I look back to,
I'll call it biblical history,
just because I don't know a different word for it,
but the Jewish oral tradition of passing down those stories
and even they said the Israelites used to pile rocks
as a remembrance of the stories that happened
of how God was faithful to their,
to whatever happened, whatever the story was.
But the point is to say those stories are important.
And right now, I mean,
representing the gap in the generations I really want,
I mean, one I appreciate, thank you for joining me today.
This is so awesome and fun.
But I love to hear you,
your opinion and your viewpoint,
because again, sometimes,
gosh, I didn't even know that was a thing, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I need to learn it and so-
And I think that exactly that you just said,
you just had the willingness to open,
to learn, to listen.
I think that's what we're missing in society at large.
Well, and many of us aren't.
I mean, I think you and I have probably a unique gift,
we're so driven by stories and understand,
I mean, some of my career was actually translating things
that were very complicated into an educational
or informational video.
So, regular people could understand it.
I mean, your financial things are a great example
of why is there so-
They're so boring?
Well, boring is one, right?
And so making it fun and humorous and all that stuff,
but to make a point really can change the game here.
But yeah, no, I think that that willingness
to walk into a room
and have the conversation,
did you ever see the,
I love the Heineken,
Heineken did the "World's Apart Video."
Did you ever see that?
No.
Oh my gosh, you have to.
You have to share when you share the interview, the link.
Yes, I will share with you and send you this link,
but it's actually phenomenal and so well done.
Because what they do is they do these interviews with people
and the people talk about their biases
and what they believe in and what they don't believe in.
And then they purposely put the two people into a room
and have them solve a problem, right?
That's cool.
And at the end,
they show the videos of the people,
talking about all of their biased thought process,
their judgements against people.
And it happens to be that they picked a person
that has that exact thing that they're talking against.
And then they offer them a beer to say,
would you like to stay and keep talking,
or would you like to leave?
Oh my gosh.
And it is just, one, and it's funny 'cause there's one guy,
I mean, the English have such a great sense of humor.
He gets up and pretends to walk away,
and then he comes back,
"Oh, just kidding."
But for a moment, there's this,
your heart drops as in,
"Oh my gosh, please don't leave the conversation."
We need this.
We'll never understand it without it,
you know what I'm saying?
So, let me go back to identity a little bit,
because I hear you on the digital side of this
and how do we create it?
I agree completely of I don't wanna wear a tag, right?
I don't wanna be,
I mean, I don't wanna be labeled
and frankly, there's a high percentage of people
in the disability space that,
are nervous about that straight up,
because of what Hitler did to the Jews and to the disabled.
if you'll remember,
the disabled in World War II
were the ones that he pulled out first
to do all of the scientific testing on.
And so there's a huge-
Fear.
Fear factor of why would I ever identify
to put myself in that position?
And so that's a big thing of how do we overcome that?
How do we get to a place
that we can put ourselves aside enough to care,
about humanity in such a way that we can make a difference?
I heavy hearted answer that I don't know how we do that.
I have a few ideas.
I think obviously cryptography
has advanced so much in the sense
that you should be able to have control over
who you choose to trust
with that information and how that inform-
Bianca,
Bianca define cryptography
because I know that-
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, cryptography it's like a secret thing.
So, it's like hiding a message
in something that only the receiver has the special code
to unlock.
So, it's like, if I were to digitize the card
and take the card and say,
"My invisible identity is this thing,
"this little secret message that only the institutions,
"the professionals with,"
like if you think about identity in a broader scape,
you'll get to a place in which only doctors,
will have a certain type of credential.
They already do, right?
They have have a doctor sort of license to practice.
If this is in a digital world,
maybe that's the only person
who the key unlocks your information.
Because then this allows us to protect where warranted
or where trust is yet to be earned.
Which is I think a lot of the problem with the peer labeling
when it's in the open space,
because then you're vulnerable to horrible things.
Like what could be horrible and leaking.
And the United States particularly horrible,
because of like, you have only six countries
that have privacy laws.
You don't have a national identity scheme.
You now you have the real ID compliant documentation,
but you don't have data ownership, right?
Legislation that is advanced enough.
So, there's a lot of sort of foundational pieces
that the legislator needs to address and attend to.
But you need to sit on the table to say,
this is a use case, right?
Just like in New Zealand,
their native population is a use case.
They identify themselves with their ancestors
in multiple families.
Okay, how does technology take this human thing
that has existed way before technology was around
and put it into this digital or digitized system
in which human, us are going to live in and work with?
And I think that's where the gap really is.
It's on people understanding that these things need
to be thought about it from a very inclusive perspective
and not inclusive because it's,
let's do a kumbaya, hold hands
and post a photo of the colors of Benetton like commercial.
So, you show every color,
we have every color in every race.
Look, we even have a person with a turban.
Like that's what I've heard people say
when they say diversity.
And I'm just like,
it's so much more than that.
An identity infrastructure has to be sophisticated enough.
And I think it is,
but it has to be thought through
from a multiple layer perspective.
AKA, you are Jess,
you're also an Emmy Award winner.
You are this show host.
You are a friend, you are a business owner,
you own a car,
you might have invisible disabilities.
There's lots of things that are identifiables for you
that not necessarily all need to be open
to the entire public
and not all necessarily need to be closed either.
So, we need a system in which,
in a digital world, this is possible.
Especially now more than ever.
Like if people weren't sick,
society was already sick in so many levels,
before the pandemic,
the employers that sit around thinking that,
"Oh yeah, we do coffees on Zoom now."
I'm like, "Okay, that's great.
"What else do you do to take care of your people?
"Because there might be a glooming issue
"of a lot of disabilities that we've been too busy to pause
"to realize we even had ourselves."
And how does society come out of that?
By owning that narrative and saying,
I own this and this is who I need to,
from a society or perspective share that with,
because I might be able to help.
Like there's a lot of really cool data around,
as an example,
societies that have historically identified
their populations correctly have actually been able to say,
because maybe as an example,
COVID attacks the Latino population a lot more,
while they've been exposed to brutal kind of work.
They're on the front.
Like there's reasons,
it's not because they don't follow the rules
or they hug each other and live over there.
And like there's lots of reasons,
but that's what data tells you.
It tells you the stories of these people.
But if it's not stored properly in this new world,
if we're not storing the nuances of who you are,
in a world where it can really make a change,
this information will never benefit
the society at large like it should.
And it's kind of a weird dichotomy in terms of like,
we share so much online.
We post everything online.
We create data all the time.
We're trusting it on the hands of some technology firms
that have very little to no regulation.
And then the really important stuff
that we should have a way of identifying like,
you've made a card because there's a gap,
there's a gap in the market on identifying people
and giving them what's maybe rightfully theirs
in the sense of we should accommodate,
we should care,
because you are a contributing member of society
and this one thing that makes you,
doesn't make you less.
And how does a digital system intake that?
That's a really big problem.
And that's why I'm passionate about identity.
When people ask me why,
it started in biometrics.
It started as a tool to capture who somebody really is.
And it ended as, wait a minute,
this is something we've anciently doing
and now we need to rethink it,
because clearly we've done it really wrong.
Because look at where we are now.
Like I was having a conversation Jess,
25 billion pounds were lost in the UK
from poorly identifying people just during COVID alone.
So, this means money
that should have gone to people and businesses
was lost because other people
and criminals could identify,
that's a societal damage that's pretty big.
So, it's not a matter of this is matter,
it's a matter of what are we gonna do about it?
Yeah.
Like this is the life of people
that we're throwing out the window.
Wow.
Well, and so on our next show,
Bianca will come back and have all of the answers for this.
I know I don't have all the answers.
I'm super passionate about it.
You open the Panera box of like,
not Panera box because it's like lovely
what comes out of it,
but the passion box.
No, and I think that's important.
I mean, we're asking valid questions
that do move us forward,
but it's not easy stuff.
Nope.
Is what it boils down to.
And I really do,
but life isn't easy and that's okay.
Yeah, right.
Say say that again out loud please.
Life isn't easy and that's okay.
Okay.
I have three daughters in college.
I need them to hear that and embrace that.
It's not, and and like it, they need to push through it.
Like you have to.
Yeah.
Well, and it's part of everything
that I think we're kind of doing.
So, any last kind of words of wisdom?
I dunno, is there something you wanna ask me
that I haven't answered on my ramblings?
I think your ramblings.
It happens when I'm not scripted and there's no questions.
That's right, exactly.
And that's the fun part for me is to just let it go.
I think there's probably a part two to this,
and so I'm gonna let all the questions.
I'm gonna let all the questions sit out there on purpose,
because I think we need to start driving a conversation.
You said it straight up as we need to be at the table
and we are at the table in some places,
but it's a difficult spot to be and to get to,
because there is, I mean,
especially at the legislative level,
there's so much red tape and stuff that, ah.
I love that math, ah.
Ah.
It's probably how they feel as well, by the way.
I would agree.
And so again, how do we change that?
What does that look like?
And the answer right now is we don't exactly know,
but we have to keep trying.
We can't give up.
And so I think you have, yeah.
So one, thank you for your expertise,
your sharing your wisdom
and continuing to press into all of these things
and to challenge US,
with your regular communication
of how you're feeling about some of this stuff.
Because again, I think you represent a voice
that's important for us to hear and recognize,
hey, we need to pay attention and we all wanna get there,
but if we're not trying, it's not gonna do happen, right?
So, in answer to your question,
I don't think I have any other questions.
Except again,
you can do your kind of passionate two minute close
on whatever you feel you wanna leave people with
from this conversation.
Oh my God, what do I wanna leave people with?
I don't wanna leave people,
I wanna meet them.
I know, right?
I wanna start a conversation.
Well, you know what?
That's conversation itself is, you're right,
we do to start the conversation.
Yeah, I want people to ask me,
what do they wanna talk about?
Like, leave your comments.
My rant to you is leave your comments,
tell us, and it's not leave your comments,
because some algorithm
is gonna make me feel better about myself,
is that leave your comments,
so we spend our energy and time,
doing something that's valuable to you.
I think that's the passion is here and you can see it,
you can feel it, you can hear it
and like live awake as you're going through life.
And like, that's what I wanna do.
I wanna light people up and light myself up in the process.
I think that's the most exciting part.
This is the Bianca that I love to listen to
in these little blurbs.
I am gonna ask the question,
how can people get in touch with you?
On LinkedIn, how you and I got in touch?
I think that's probably the easiest way
or you can send me an email.
It's bianca@talle.co.
Okay, cool.
So, that's my email.
You can get me directly.
I'll include that.
Not a bolt.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, Bianca, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much Jess.
Thank you for taking this step and involving me in it.
Thank you.
I really appreciate it.
(upbeat music)