Sharron Battle wasn't always a serial entrepreneur, inventor, or mechanical and nuclear engineer. Neither was she born into a tech company with cutting-edge biometric solutions. But Sharron has had an entrepreneurial spirit since she was a child. Her mother first noticed her daughter's striking intelligence in kindergarten when she began selling pages from her coloring book to other children in the class. This amusing observation became a memorable illustration of Sharron's ambitious character and highlighted the tremendous accomplishments she would eventually achieve.

Sharron Battle
Sharron Battle Source: Sharron Battle | Photographer: Juan Montenegro

Her story starts when Sharron was in her senior year of high school. She was accepted into one of the most prestigious pre-engineering university programs in the United States. Sharron was shocked when she received the acceptance letter, because she had spent so much time on sports, rather than academics. She went on to study mechanical engineering, as its challenging nature piqued her longstanding interest of working out how everything is connected.

In addition to being part of a pre-engineering program, Sharron was the recipient of a Boeing scholarship that fully paid for her bachelor's degree. During her studies, Sharron completed an internship for the aircraft company and also for leading oil company, BP. She then took the most obvious route of accepting a job that Boeing was offering her after graduation. These were exciting opportunities for Sharron to receive hands-on experience, but also to learn what she really wanted in a future career.

Following this part of her life, Sharron started graduate school and felt reinvigorated by the academic setting. She decided to pursue a master's in nuclear engineering and was the first Black woman to graduate from that specific program. During Sharron's time there, she conducted research and development on carbon resin with epoxy fibers for the National Science Foundation. By this point, Sharron had already built solid professional experience with very well-known names, but she didn't plan on stopping. Sharron wasn't ready to give up on learning and wanted to explore as many areas as she could.

Soon after Sharron finished her nuclear engineering program, she got a job offer with Proctor and Gamble, managing a team of over 60 people. Sharron went on to work a number of senior roles, including redesigning culture at Dr. Pepper, Cadbury, and Schweppes, as well as working as a Senior Consultant at Deloitte in Merger and Acquisitions (M&A) and Strategy and Operations. She also studied for an MBA in strategy and finance at Washington University in St. Louis Olin School of Business, and abroad at Imperial College London.

While balancing part-time consultancy work, gaining another certification as a Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma, saving Fortune 500 companies billions in cost savings, and working on projects with the government and universities, Sharron was keen to try something different. Her desire to leave the corporate world came from a personality test. Sharron had taken tons of these throughout her career and some were more insightful than others. The one she had taken at Deloitte was a game-changer. It told her she was a logistical genius. Sharron didn't let the results inflate her ego, but at the same time, it served as an indicator she could accomplish anything. She began planning to start her own company, applied for the Google Startup Venture, and was one of seven founders selected globally.

At this turning point, she also won the "Designer of the Year Award" from D&AD (Global Association for Creatives & Design, a London-based organization) which most designers in their entire career never win. She redesigned the Holiday Inn Hotel using biometrics. She attended a prestigious design school and after winning the award was headhunted by several design houses in London, but she instead chose to go to Silicon Valley. Out of 53 countries, she was the only applicant to win the designer of the year award.

Source: Sharron Battle | Photographer: Juan Montenegro

Her original idea, when she was developing new tech, was to utilize biometrics for a social ecommerce networking community called Derbywire. Sharron thought this unique idea would resolve the issue of fraud and allow creatives to receive payment for the art and music they created. Like many promising ventures, Sharron's idea required a lot of sacrifice, investments and learning curves. She had to fight for funding because the proposition was unexplored. That was a challenge for Sharron, but she received mentorship from many prominent tech founders, advisors, investment bankers, legal attorney's and corporate partners that helped her mold the foundation of her company and raise funding.

She made a significant pivot, in 2014, Selfiepay was launched and was quickly named startup of the year. The new company aimed to enable 2D authentication with integration of iris scan features when credit or debit card users attempted to make a payment. This risk-free verification method allowed 100% authentic verification, unlike other 2D alternatives that primarily used attribute matching techniques. The strength of this application was due to its iris matching attribute. Once registered, 2D Authentication was the only thing needed to verify a payment. As Sharron likes to say, "I am my ID".

Sharron attended an extended MBA program to help her prepare for taking her company global and becoming a Top Tier tech founder, she received a certificate of completion. Moreover, after learning more about the biometric space, Sharron went on to enhance the authentication process especially focusing on the issue of the cultural bias that the technology displayed because of the attribute matching practices being applied. She came up with 3D Artificial Intelligent (AI) Authentication, patented, which is a highly advanced method of authentication. In 2021 the company started to build the newly advanced animated technology in-house.

The company is expanding their original 3D AI Authentication tech by offering Selfie (Wearables, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality), SelfieCloud, SelfieHomes and to support a gold backed stablecoin. Crazy Brilliant is planning to open two biometric data centers in Las Vegas and will scale their presence in the future, in partnership with IBM/Convergence with creation of a 3D AI Authenticated gold backed stablecoin, patented, bringing forth a more trusted transactional process in the crypto market. SelfieHomes will incorporate touch, voice, and 3D AI authentication services to transform the idea of smart homes. Lastly, the technology will be used to support smart cities, retail, coins, user online profiles to provide transparency in who owns accounts impacting the Know Your Customer (KYC) process with digital currency transactions and in most banking institutional practices in managing accounts.

Currently, Sharron has five patents for her inventions and will be promoting Selfie as a lifestyle brand woven into the fabric of people's lives, once all these expansions are released. Government tech projects will consist of wearables, 3D AI Authentication, customized augmented reality, and virtual reality projects being explored, implemented for different applications.

Sharron Battle has an impressive background in business, engineering, design and now tech, but her overall vision is to uplift humanity. Through Selfie's widely applicable technology, Sharron plans to further human capabilities, positively impact the world. She wants to build a portal for creative work without any social or economic barriers to impact generational wealth:

"My work in Silicon Valley has allowed me to make discoveries that can solve core problems humanity is experiencing. At Crazy Brilliant, Inc., we're not looking to control the market, we're looking to fix problems and create a sample of what advanced technology should be used for, and how it can help humanity overall and let others adopt it and do good things with it. People have been challenged with how to integrate advanced technologies in the proper way. So we're coming in behind the scenes as subject matter experts and creating a pathway where tech can be used consciously for the betterment of humanity," says Sharron Battle.