Web3 is often described as meritocratic, a space where decentralisation and open networks reduce gatekeeping. Oonagh van den Berg does not dismiss that ambition, but she is clear about the gap between architecture and outcomes. Power dynamics do not vanish because a system is distributed. They shift shape, and they can become harder to challenge when governance is informal.
Van den Berg is the founder and chief executive of RAW Compliance and Virtual Risk Solutions, and the author of the Modernising Compliance book series. She has built her career in the overlap between regulation, technology, and the practical mechanics of trust. It is not a glamorous corner of the industry, but it is the one that determines what scales.
Her definition of leadership is direct. “Leadership, for me, has never been about control, it is about clarity and trust,” she said. “Scaling globally taught me that people do not follow titles, they follow conviction, competence, and consistency.”
That view is shaped by experience in sectors where credibility is not assumed. “As a woman in a male dominated industry, I have learned that you cannot outsource credibility,” she said. “You earn it by knowing your domain deeply, not just the narrative layer, but the mechanics underneath, how money moves, how systems fail, how incentives distort behaviour.”
She also makes a case for a leadership trait that is often treated as secondary. “Empathy is not a weakness in leadership, it is an accelerant,” she said. “Especially in emerging tech, where uncertainty is constant, people need leaders who can hold complexity without ego.”
Week 24 – Oonagh van den Berg, Founder & CEO, RAW Compliance and Virtual Risk Solutions and Author: Modernising Compliance Book Series
Decentralisation does not dissolve hierarchy
Van den Berg’s critique of Web3 culture is not ideological. It is observational. She says some of the negative behaviours associated with traditional finance have migrated into the sector, even as the industry markets itself as an alternative.
Decentralisation, she argues, can create opportunity without automatically dismantling entrenched structures. “Influence still clusters around capital, visibility, and networks, and those are areas where women have historically had less presence,” she said.
In her account, the lack of formal governance in some parts of Web3 can deepen the problem. Bias becomes harder to challenge when there are no clear lines of accountability. The result is a familiar pattern under new labels, with the language of openness masking the reality of who is heard, funded, and promoted.
“True meritocracy only exists when access to knowledge, capital, and voice is genuinely equal,” she said. “Until we address that, decentralisation alone will not fix the problem, intention and accountability matter just as much as architecture.”
Authority and the discipline of response
When asked whether her authority has been challenged because she is a woman, van den Berg is unequivocal. “Absolutely, sometimes subtly, sometimes very directly,” she said.
Early in her career, she tried what she calls the out prepare bias approach, leaning on additional credentials, extra data, and more proof. Over time, she concluded that constant defence is a losing posture. “You do not win by playing defence forever,” she said.
Her response now is measured and deliberate. “I respond by being very clear, very calm, and very factual,” she said. “I do not over explain, and I do not perform authority, I demonstrate it.”
Age has also sharpened her sense of boundaries. She describes learning the power of no, and the importance of leaving situations where values are misaligned. Confidence, in her framing, is not a performance. It is a decision to be precise, and to conserve energy for work that matters.
Trust in a trustless economy
Web3 markets itself as trustless, meaning that systems can be designed to reduce reliance on intermediaries. Van den Berg accepts the logic but insists on a human corrective.
“Trustless systems remove the need to trust code, but they do not remove the need to trust people,” she said.
Her approach is built on transparency and consistency. She leads with intent and with trade offs, rather than with charisma. “I lead with clarity of intent, why we are doing something, who it benefits, and where the risks are,” she said. “I do not oversell, and I do not hide trade offs.”
The effect, she argues, is faster trust, even when disagreement exists. “Trust is not about charisma, it is about alignment,” she said. “When people know where you stand, even if they disagree, trust forms faster.”
A route in for women
Van den Berg does not present Web3 as a closed technical guild. She is clear that women do not need to be developers to belong, but they do need conceptual literacy.
“You do not need to be a developer to belong in Web3, but you do need to understand how the technology works at a conceptual level,” she said. Her advice is to ignore jargon and learn fundamentals such as wallets, smart contracts, consensus, and governance, then anchor that understanding in an existing strength such as law, risk, compliance, UX, strategy, or ethics.
She also encourages active collaboration with engineers, both to learn and to bridge gaps between disciplines. She argues that some of the most damaging decisions are not made by engineers at all. They are made by people who deploy technology without understanding its implications. Interdisciplinary backgrounds, she says, are an advantage in a sector that is now colliding with regulation and real world risk.
The bridge between communities and regulators
Much of van den Berg’s career has been spent translating between groups that do not naturally trust each other. “I have spent my career translating between worlds that do not naturally speak to each other, regulators and technologists, engineers and boards, innovators and supervisors,” she said.
The requirement, in her account, is credibility in both directions. She rejects the easy stereotypes, that regulators are anti innovation or that communities are naive. You have to understand incentives and fears on both sides, and treat them with respect.
She believes women often bring a useful perspective to that work. They ask different questions, spot second order consequences, and tend to think longer term. In her view, those instincts are not soft skills. They are governance skills, and they will matter if Web3 is going to mature responsibly.
AI governance is not symbolic
Van den Berg is particularly direct on the intersection of AI and blockchain, where decision making can be encoded and scaled.
“AI and blockchain together amplify power,” she said. “They encode decisions at scale.”
If the people shaping those systems share similar backgrounds, she argues that biases can become embedded and hard to reverse. She does not want women included symbolically. She wants them included substantively, because ethical governance requires lived understanding of exclusion, surveillance, and imbalance.
“Ethics is not a side conversation,” she said. “It is infrastructure.”
What is missing
Van den Berg is candid about the limits of the support available early in her career. She describes mentors, peers, and moments of solidarity, often informal and behind the scenes. What she believes is missing today is more practical.
“What is missing today are practical structures, access to capital, sponsorship, not just mentorship, and safe spaces to fail and learn without reputational punishment,” she said. “We do not need more panels. We need pathways and actions.”
Three tips for becoming a leader in Web3 (plus two extra!)
- Master something real. Depth beats visibility every time.
- Do not wait to be invited. Build, speak, publish, challenge.
- Choose substance over hype. Trends fade. Credibility compounds.
- Do not shrink to fit a room. If you feel out of place, it is often because the room needs changing, not you.
- Stay continuously open to learning. Real innovation requires iteration and the humility to accept that failure is part of forward movement.
