Tess Rinearson ’11 

Vice-President of Engineering, Tendermint Core | Blockchain Technology, Cryptocurrency, Future of Digital Transactions

July 2020

by Jim Collins, photo courtesy Tess Rinearson

The Spring/Summer 2020 issue of Lakeside magazine featured "The Futurists," a gallery of forward-looking alums who, unconstrained by current assumptions, offer a view from outside the box.

BACKGROUND // Software engineer, studied computer science.

HER QUESTION // How do we create a more democratic, more transparent, auditable financial system?

THE WORK // Currently working on “consensus algorithms,” the difficult mechanism by which a decentralized network agrees on the value and validity of a transaction.

THE FUTURE // We’ll have much safer and more efficient Fintech than today’s antiquated system where transactions require verifying by hand, paying middle agents, and physically trucking dollars.

IN HER WORDS // “Some of this, frankly, feels like black magic. It’s people making up new math to solve some of these issues.”