Maria-Luisa Marsal Llacuna is an Architect (2001) with two Masters (2004, 2011) and two Doctorates (2008, 2013) in the fields of urban planning and applied ICT. She worked for the government in the UK and now in Catalunya, at Government’s of Catalonia Catalan Institute of energy. Before working for public administrations, she spent fifteen years in the academia, in different research and leadership roles in public universities. Her academic career includes the creation and direction of world’s first official scientific master’s program in smart cities; several competitive and commercial research projects in the domains of smart and sustainable cities; postdoc scholarships in Germany (2006) and the USA (2011); a US patent on urban planning standards technology; and, the publication as main author of about twenty papers in top peer-reviewed academic journals. She served as UN Habitat III expert and she held two mandates as a chair at UN’s U4SSC initiative, with her second term focused on exploring blockchain applications for cities. Her expertise on blockchain for governments has awarded her with the leadership of the Barcelona Chapter at the Government Blockchain Association (GBA) and participation in GBA’s leadership advisory committee.