The Cover #06: Michela Galvão

Born in Vila dos Marmiteiros, in Minas Gerais, Michela Galvão found in technology a portal of transformation. The daughter of a seamstress and an informal entrepreneur, she grew up in an environment where work and creativity were matters of survival rather than of choice. Today, with more than 30 years in the tech world, Michela is a reference when it comes to blockchain, digital literacy and social impact. But before holding leadership roles in global communities, she was already programming possible realities within her own.

“I was never on a formal contract. I always ran my own thing, like my family, but with the tools I had”, she says. It was on a computer maintenance course at SENAI that Michela found the first key for hacking the system. She built websites, moved to apps when she noticed where people's attention was going, worked as a consultant, studied networks and systems. But it was in 2018, at an event on blockchain, that something clicked for good: to decentralise is to redistribute power.

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“I am the first Black woman to talk about blockchain on YouTube in Brazil”, she says firmly. “My passion comes from that understanding that power is returning to the hands of the user, and who is the user? The people.” From there, the mission became clear: to educate, to train and to generate income. “To hack the system, we need to understand it.”

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During the pandemic, Michela co-founded with her sister the project Empodera MG, a programme of mentoring and life planning for young women in situations of vulnerability. The pilot was a success and revealed what she had already sensed: there is an urgent demand for access to knowledge in the peripheries. The project grew, took shape and became Impacto Coletivo, a hub of digital and racial literacy based in Belo Horizonte, which uses blockchain and Web3 to drive businesses run by women in favelas and outlying communities.

Impacto Coletivo's method is divided into three stages: Despertar, Desafiar and Acelerar. Over a year, participants go through distance learning, mentoring with major institutions and access to investment to get their businesses off the ground. In 2025 the goal is clear: to reach more than a thousand women, with two scholarship places for every ten paying participants. “We are not an NGO. We are a startup. We are here to foster businesses.”

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Michela's path has not gone unnoticed. In 2023 she was named Best Web3 Educator. Today she is part of communities and boards such as ForbesBLK, HER DAO and UNESCO-SOST. With Impacto Coletivo, she not only builds bridges between the periphery and new technologies, she designs an ecosystem where Black and peripheral women create, lead and transform.

“If technology is not accessible to everyone, it is not accessible. And changing the system from inside... perhaps that is not naivety. It may be talent.”