The Future of Identity

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast, I’m joined by Eran Haggiag, founder and CEO of Glide Identity, to explore a bold vision for the future of digital identity. While much of the industry is focused on wallets, passkeys, and government-issued credentials, Eran argues that the foundation for a global, high-assurance identity system has been sitting in our pockets for decades: the SIM...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast, I’m joined by Rob White, Head of Samsung Wallet US, to discuss Samsung’s role in the rapidly evolving digital identity ecosystem. From mobile driver’s licenses to the newly launched Samsung ID with CLEAR, Robert shares how Samsung is thinking about identity as a foundational layer for secure digital experiences across its devices and services. Our...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast, I’m joined by Amit Sharma, Global Head of Digital Strategy at IDEMIA Public Security, to explore a more foundational question than usual: why digital identity matters right now. Rather than focusing on a single deployment or ecosystem, this conversation zooms out to examine how accelerating AI capabilities, data exploitation, and digital-first liv...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast , I’m joined by Robin Tombs, co-founder and CEO of Yoti, one of the earliest and most widely adopted reusable digital identity wallets globally. Robin shares the long journey behind Yoti - from early frustrations with knowledge-based identity checks to building a biometric, user-controlled identity app years before reusable identity became a mainst...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast , I’m joined by Ross Freiman-Mendel, Head of Product Growth at Persona, to explore the shift from one-off, siloed KYC toward network-based and reusable identity products. Ross walks through Persona’s consumer and enterprise identity networks, including Reusable Personas, Persona Connect, and emerging work on Know Your Agent (KYA), and explains why...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast , I’m joined by Chris Goh, former National Harmonisation Lead for Australia’s mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) and the architect behind Queensland’s digital driver’s license. Chris played a pivotal role in driving national alignment across states and territories, culminating in the 2024 agreement to adopt ISO mDoc/mDL standards for mobile driver’s l...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast , I’m joined by Thomas Mayfield, Head of Decentralized Trust & Identity Solutions at the Cardano Foundation. Thomas leads the development of the Veridian Wallet, an open-source digital identity platform built on the KERI (Key Event Receipt Infrastructure) protocol and funded by the Foundation. Our conversation explores the rapidly evolving Web3...

On this episode we spoke with Teresa Wu, Vice President of Smart Credentials and Access at IDEMIA. IDEMIA has been involved with many U.S. states for their mobile IDs, including New York, Arizona, Iowa, Delaware and more. Very few people on earth have more experience than Teresa working with governments to issue digital credentials. We asked her what would encourage more states to launch mobile ID...

On today’s episode we spoke to Rebekah Johnson, Founder & CEO of Numeracle. This was a fascinating conversation about Rebekah’s journey starting Numeracle in 2016 to bring trust back to business communications by tackling robocalling and spam in the telecom ecosystem. We talk about how Numeracle became an early identity issuer in telecom through the implementation of STIR/SHAKEN protocols whic...

In this episode, we speak with Jonas Branvall, Head of International Expansion at BankID Sweden, one of the most widely-adopted reusable ID systems in the world. With 99.7% of Swedish adults using BankID and over 7,500 relying parties onboard, it’s a fascinating success story in the digital identity space. I’ve been eager to explore what drives the adoption of a universally embraced digital ID sys...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast, I’m joined by Diego Fernández, co-founder of QuarkID and Sovra, to discuss the innovative decentralized identity solution rolled out by the city of Buenos Aires. QuarkID has garnered international attention for its self-custodial identity wallet app, and Diego provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at its development, challenges, and growin...

In this episode of the Future of Identity podcast, I’m joined by Jeffrey Schwartz, Founder and CEO of Dentity, to discuss the recent acquisition of Trinsic’s SSI platform assets, their ongoing partnership with Trinsic, and the innovations driving decentralized identity adoption. They explore the journey behind Dentity’s success in achieving market traction, building trust, and scaling decentralize...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast , I’m joined by Ajay Gupta, Chief Digital Transformation Officer of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, to discuss California’s groundbreaking mobile driver’s license (mDL) program. From its launch to current adoption trends and future ambitions, this episode provides a comprehensive look at how California is shaping the future of mDLs. In...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast, I’m joined by David Kelts, a leader in digital identity and mobile ID initiatives, with a career that spans significant contributions across multiple companies and initiatives worldwide. David's insights shed light on the journey of mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs), the evolution of identity verification, and his current role at Decipher Ident...

In this episode of The Future of Identity Podcast, I’m joined by Rohan Pinto, Co-founder and CTO of 1Kosmos, a company at the forefront of decentralized identity and passwordless authentication solutions. We explore the evolution of identity management and the journey from blockchain-based beginnings to building secure, user-controlled identity systems that go beyond traditional centralized approa...

In this episode, I’m joined by Calvin Fabre, President and Founder of Envoc, a company that has been at the heart of mobile driver's license (mDL) innovation in Louisiana, a state leading the nation in mDL adoption. Calvin shares the fascinating story of how his company helped bring the country’s first digital driver’s license into reality, starting with a simple idea for a “digital glove box...

In this episode, I sit down with Karyl Fowler, co-founder and CEO of Transmute, a company at the forefront of integrating modern identity technology into global trade. Before founding Transmute, Karyl's work in the semiconductor and bioelectronics industries provided her with unique insights into the complexities of global supply chains. We explore a variety of topics, including: The challeng...

In this episode, I talk with Kim Hamilton Duffy, the Executive Director of the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF). Before her work at DIF, Kim served as the CTO at Learning Machine, an early pioneer in the self-sovereign identity space that was acquired in 2020. We cover a range of topics, including: - The early days at Learning Machine and how they acquired their first customers - The messag...

One of the most frequent requests that we get is to record an episode about Trinsic. So this week we’re doing just that because we recently announced the launch of our identity acceptance network in partnership with CLEAR, Yoti, IDVerse, Airside, Dentity, and more than a dozen others. This episode will outline what identity acceptance is, how Trinsic landed on this approach, and how this might be...

In this episode we talk with Adrian Field, the Director of Market Development at OneID, which is a bank-based identity verification product focused on the UK market. We cover a range of topics, including: How they apply a revenue-share model to incentivize banks to participate in their ecosystem The main use cases they’re focusing on in their go-to-market and the drivers that qualify those as good...

In today’s episode we spoke with Taylor Liggett, Chief Growth Officer of ID.me , which is the largest reusable ID network in the United States and may be the largest private digital ID network in the world. With over 100 million user wallets and $150 million in revenue, ID.me has figured some things out about reusable ID adoption and monetization. We talk about how reusable identity reduces the fr...

On today’s episode we talked with Eric Scouten, Senior Engineering Manager at Adobe, who has been working for the last four years on solving content authenticity. What does that mean? We’ll get into it in the episode, but suffice it to say that it’s an effort to bring trust to content online. Was the pope really photographed in that puffy jacket? Was the photo of a war zone really taken this week,...

On today’s episode we spoke to Adam Gunther, SVP and General Manager of Digital Solutions at Equifax. This was a fascinating conversation about Adam’s journey leading decentralized identity at IBM, moving into an operating role within Equifax, and how their reusable identity strategy has evolved over time. We talk about tactical factors that are needed for reusable identity adoption, like solution...

In this episode we talk with Phil Windley, Sr. Software Development Manager at AWS, Cofounder of IIW, former Chair of Sovrin Foundation. We talked about his experience building and leading the Sovrin Foundation, which at one point was almost synonymous with the term self-sovereign identity. It was set up to be an identity metasystem that would reinvent how identity was done online… and we talk abo...

Today we talked with Nick Thomas, cofounder of Finicity, which was acquired by Mastercard, where Nick went on to be the EVP of Global Open Finance Innovation. Nick has a fascinating career that has paralleled digital identity for a long time, as a cofounder of Bluetooth and FDX, the major open banking standards body in the US. These are both organizations that brought an industry together around c...