Let's talk about digital identity with Aaron Painter, CEO at Nametag. In episode 69, Oscar and Aaron discuss identity in the metaverse - including Aaron's vision for how both people and organisations can prove their identity in the metaverse, and what virtual platforms can do to make their communities safer/more trustworthy.

[Transcript below] "I'm deeply optimistic that we can create this metaverse environment, or the next generation of the internet or Web 3.0, with a greater sense of authenticity behind people to create safer and more trusted spaces." Aaron Painter is the CEO of Nametag Inc, the company who invented "Sign in with ID" as a more secure alternative to passwords. He is the former Vice President and General Manager of Microsoft China, Hong Kong, and Brazil as well as best-selling author of LOYAL, where he describes his key to leadership: fostering a culture of listening.

Find Aaron on LinkedIn.

Nametag is the fast, safe, everywhere ID with a mission to bring authenticity to the internet and enable people to build more trusted relationships. Through sophisticated, proprietary AI-technology, Nametag verifies people, not passwords, creating the next generation of digital security. The app uses multi-factor authentication, government ID verification, and biometric recognition to ensure only users have access to their own data. Nametag never stores, sells, or mines a user's data. By putting privacy first, Nametag gives the consumer control over sharing your personal information, and the power to choose when it's shared, where it's shared, and for how long.

Find out more about Nametag at www.getnametag.com.

We’ll be continuing this conversation on Twitter using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure!

Podcast transcript Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla.

Oscar Santolalla: Hello. And today, our guest is a very special guest - it's Aaron Painter, and he is the CEO of Nametag, the company who invented "Sign in with ID" as a more secure alternative to passwords. He is the former Vice President and General Manager of Microsoft China, Hong Kong, and Brazil as well as best-selling author of LOYAL, where he describes his key to leadership: fostering a culture of listening.

Hello, Aaron.

Aaron Painter: Hello, Oscar.

Oscar: Welcome. It's a pleasure talking with you.

Aaron: Thank you. It's an honour to be here. I love the show. I learn so much from each episode so it's really a privilege to be on.

Oscar: Fantastic. Definitely, super interesting, the conversation we're going to have actually about a topic we have not talked before in this show is the metaverse. So, let's get started. Let's talk about digital identity. And of course, we first want to hear about our guest, so what was your journey to come to this world of identity?

Aaron: My journey was really growing up in technology. I spent about 14 years at Microsoft, started in Redmond near Seattle. And then the rest of my career was outside the US. I spent four years in France, two-and-a-half years in Brazil, five-and-a-half years in China, mostly doing international development, working with large customers of Microsoft's, partnerships, helping Microsoft expand into new geographies. I loved it. I got to experience so many different people and cultures around the world.

I left and then went to run a cloud computing consultancy firm based in the UK called Cloudreach for a couple of years. And I left in December of 2019, just before the pandemic. That's where it all started.

Oscar: Since when you started in identity, already in your work in Microsoft, you start entering, immersing yourself in this world of identity, or it came much, much more recently?

Aaron: Identity came to me much more recently. And it was because so many customers that I was working with at Microsoft and later at Cloudreach were fascinated with security. Increasingly,