Meet the Team is our ongoing series of employee profiles. It’s an opportunity for our users and partners to get to know us a little better. As a remote company with employees around the world — from the U.S. to Slovenia to Spain to New Zealand — it’s also an opportunity for our team to get to know each other a little better.
We’re proud to introduce Gašper Okršlar, Director of Delivery at GlobaliD. Gašper has been working in the technology industry for about six years and is the co-founder of Zavod Sportivita, an online platform that provides free educational activities for kids and their parents. He earned his undergraduate and Masters degrees at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia.
He joined the GlobaliD team in 2021 and helps lead our multi-disciplined engineering teams that plan, build, deploy, and support our software products in multi-geographic locations.
Meet Gašper
My name is Gašper Okršlar and I’m a productivity enthusiast who works in IT. I’m currently the Director of Delivery at GlobaliD where my primary responsibility is to lead our software teams and ensure that our products and solutions achieve the needed objectives.
What attracted him to GlobaliD
I enjoy working in environments where I have to tackle multiple projects at once, and I’ve always been fascinated with scaling and optimizing internal teams. I was looking for a new challenge and GlobaliD seemed like a perfect fit since it checked all my goals — it was an international team with a very interesting product and great potential. I love that GlobaliD is solving many of the problems that exist within the digital identity space. This is going to be something everyone is talking about a lot sooner than most of the world realizes.
On his role and responsibilities
As Director of Delivery I work with almost all of our departments including engineering, project management, product marketing and communications. I’m responsible for managing, developing, and adapting the programs and processes needed to ensure a smooth delivery of our product and app updates. I coordinate with leaders and personnel from all departments in order to identify any bottlenecks in our processes and figure out ways to remove them. I’m also responsible for reporting the status of delivery operations to our management and leadership teams, and I serve as one of the key links between leadership and engineering.
Thoughts on the recent GlobaliD app update and ID Wallet release
It was very exciting to see the ID Wallet released and made available to all our users. We had been building that product for about a year and a half. It was great to see it become a reality and this release sets us up to begin delivering more product releases that are part of our long-term vision. We’ve really switched our focus and taken a much more market-centric approach by discovering what people need and will use, and we’re putting our energy into making those products. For example, I’m really looking forward to releasing our non-custodial wallet which has been in the works for a couple of months now.
On GlobaliD’s vision, ethos and the importance of credentials
Everything we’re building is helping us get further toward fulfilling our vision of putting people in control of their identity and data. That’s why we’re putting such an emphasis on incorporating verifiable credentials into our products. They’re really taking things to the next level because nobody can take a credential away from you or change it. You’re dealing with real, live data that affirms your identity.
People may not realize it yet, but we’re in this transition period where we’re going from using identity solutions that can be easily manipulated, to real identities that represent a real person on the internet. We’re taking baby steps to get there right now, but our vision is crystal clear and when we get there it’s going to change everything.
Bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3
I see GlobaliD as a bridge between Web2 and Web3. Our challenge is making sure that someone who has never heard of Web3 has a seamless transition to the next version of the internet. To do that we need to make products and features that seem familiar to the end user. They will run on new networks and new technologies, but ideally the user won’t notice a difference. If somebody can use a banking app then they can use a non-custodial wallet. It should be as easy as that. If we deliver a product that works and needs as little explanation as possible, then we will start to see widespread adoption of Web3 products. We’ve got a long way to go, but I see the potential. We’re trail blazers and we just have to lead people down the right path so they feel comfortable.
Balancing compliance and regulation with decentralization
I think we’re one of the few companies that are putting a lot of effort towards compliance. A good example would be the noncustodial wallet. We could have just built it and made it very similar to other wallets on the market, but we thought about how to make it compliant. We built in anti-money laundering support, meaning that if you’re on the sanctions list you can’t use the GlobaliD wallet. We’re really finding a balance between a centralized and decentralized approach. Decentralization isn’t necessarily a state of being. It’s a journey that you take and strive to achieve.
What he’s looking forward to
Every release cycle is a challenge, but every time we ship an app update I get very excited. No two releases are the same and it’s always interesting to see what gets people’s attention and what they respond to. Every update is also a chance for the team to learn or adapt to a challenge we need to overcome, and that’s what ensures we keep improving the app overall. With that said, I’m honestly just always looking forward to the next release because it means we’re building a new product or adding a new feature.
On his experience before joining GlobaliD
I received a bachelor’s degree in Forestry and a Masters degree in Spatial Planning before accepting a job with the Slovenian Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning in the Cohesion Policy division. While I was there I got the opportunity to work on large infrastructure projects such as wastewater management systems, drinking water management and territorial investments. A few years later I decided to move to the private sector and work for a digital marketing agency. I started as a Project Manager before being promoted to a Key Account Manager. I began to get really interested in the idea of working for an international start-up company and ended up joining the GlobaliD team as a Scrum Master. After about a year I was promoted to Senior Project Manager and now I’m the Director of Delivery.
On his hobbies and interests
I recently started a podcast with a coworker called Casual. We discuss a lot of different topics such as online privacy, crypto trends and warrant canaries (listen to episode 17 to learn more about those). You can find Casual on YouTube, all podcasts apps and at casual.is. We plan to pick up the pace soon and publish episodes more frequently. Subscribe to check it out and support the show.
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