Inside Smobler’s all-female leadership

According to the World Bank, female representation in leadership at Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google and Microsoft runs between 26% and 34%. Women make up 60% of Smobler’s workforce, and with the hire of former Timbre Group executive Veronica Ong as head of business development, the core leadership team became entirely women-led.

At its helm is founder and CEO Dr. Loretta Chen, who spent over two decades driving social equity through media, storytelling and technology. She was the People’s Choice for Nominated Member of Parliament and has been an international consultant to the Kingdom of Bhutan since 2011; she is part of the AWS Women Founders Program and UBS Project Female Founder, a Top 100 Women of the Future, and was named among the Unstoppable Women of Web3 and AI.

When the metaverse emerged as a frontier during the pandemic, Chen saw a way to reshape narratives and democratise access, and founded Smobler to bring brands, IPs and communities into Web3 with diversity and accessibility at the core.

The record since then includes the world’s first phygital wedding in The Sandbox, Bhutanverse for the Kingdom of Bhutan, and A11yverse — the world’s first disability-led accessibility park and training programme, built with SG Enable. Alongside those sit Playground@UXC for Singapore Polytechnic, Mediacorp’s Year-End Countdown 2023, StarHub’s Equalverse, and the first cross-chain project between Cardano and Polygon for Clay Nation.

The team leads are Rafaela Rizzi (production), Gianna Bui (communications), Joyce Gan (administration) and Veronica Ong (business development), heading a team spread across Vietnam, Singapore and beyond. “As a company led by women, we are not just breaking industry norms — we’re actively building an inclusive, innovative future in the Metaverse and Web3,” Ong said on joining.