Cathy Barrera

Background

About Cathy Barrera

I am a Partner and Founding Economist at Prysm Group, an economic consulting and corporate learning firm that specializes in incentive design, monetization, and governance design for startups, enterprises, institutions, and governments adopting emerging technologies including blockchain, digital assets, and the metaverse. I am a frequent keynote speaker, panelist and writer, addressing various topics at the intersection of emerging technologies and economics. I have been the Lead Collaborator at the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab and an industry expert for MIT Sloan and Columbia Business School’s executive education programs.I was previously tenure-track faculty at the S.C. Johnson School of Management at Cornell University, and I appeared as a seminar speaker or guest lecturer at schools and institutions including Harvard, DARPA, MIT, NYU, NBER, Cornell Tech, and Imperial College. Prior to co-founding Prysm Group, I was the Chief Economist at ZipRecruiter. I received my BA from Northwestern University, where I majored in Communication Studies, Economics and Mathematics. I hold an MSc in Applicable Mathematics from the London School of Economics and and PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University where I studied under Nobel Laurate Oliver Hart.