John Szczepaniak

Email: john.szczepaniak@gnosis.io
Location: Los Angeles, California
Phone: (607) 232-2334

I am an experienced communications and operations professional with a passion for DAOs, peer-to-peer, credibly neutral technology and web3. Humans need to coordinate to achieve great things, and having credibly neutral, trusted, open-source technology is critical for solving the intractable problems we collectively face. With a proven track record in leading impactful DAO operations, producing high-quality, value-driven content, and steering effective communication strategies, I am a valuable asset to teams dedicated to building principled web3 technologies.

Experience

Community Lead at Gnosis (2021 - Present)

Lead the Gnosis All-Hands Biweekly Internal call.
Moderate the Gnosis Forum, steward governance for the GnosisDAO and advise on DAO best practices.
Lead strategy to cultivate a meaningful, engaged, and growing community around Gnosis Chain.
Spearheaded the monthly Ecosystem Wednesday and Gnosis AI public calls.
Own all communication channels and ensure that public facing communications align with strategic goals.
Maintain product communication guides, brand assets, and press contacts.
Manage and lead a team of 3 to execute and deliver community driven growth initiatives.
Write product announcements and produce research essays on areas of interest pertaining to Gnosis.

Contributor, GitcoinDAO (2020 - 2021)

Played a key role in the Fraud Detection & Defense workstream.
Assisted in the development of governance mechanisms and incentive structures.

Contributor, ScribeDAO (2021)

Curated trending articles and emerging projects within the crypto space.
Supported the growth of ScribeDAO as a learn-to-earn platform.

Education

MFA, School of Art & Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago (2013 - 2015)
MA, Binghamton University (2010- 2013)
BA, University of Toronto (2003 - 2008)

Talks

Gnosis: The Community-Run Chain, Causal Islands Conference (2024)

Projects

KERNEL Fellow, KB8 (2024)

KERNEL is an 8-week, invite-only program for top tech talent looking to build relationships, products, and companies in blockchain and web3.

School for Poetic Computation, Solidarity Infranstructures (2023)

How do we cultivate infrastructures of solidarity with each other, especially under conditions of crisis, protest, and systemic inequity? Beyond corporate data clouds and monopolistic service providers, this class offered critical space to reframe technology from a grassroots perspective in relation to other components of day-to-day societal infrastructure.

Token Engineering Academy DAO Reward Systems Research Group (2021)

An OpenScience initiative for TokenEngineers & DAOists in collaboration with OceanDAO, NearDAO, GnosisDAO, TECommons and Boson Protocol. The Governauts Rewards Systems Research Initiative was a 3-months program exploring incentives in a DAO context. Rewards Systems are a key element for DAOs to grow the ecosystem value, reward contributors, and grant decision-making power (governance tokens) to those who provide value to a DAO.

Skills

Operations Management
DAO Governance
Community Building
Strategic Communications
Project Management