Tonya M. Evans (@IPProfEvans) is a global leader, accomplished academic and administrator, renowned speaker and crypto policy and education advisor, with over twenty years of experience in law, academia, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. Dr. Evans currently serves as tenured Full Professor at Penn State Dickinson Law School with a five-year co-hire appointment to the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences to pursue her interdisciplinary research. Her work focuses on the intellectual property, legal, regulatory, policy, and economic justice implications of new technologies and innovation; specifically, distributed ledger technologies, cryptocurrencies and other cryptographically secured digital assets including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Dr. Evans was named to the prestigious Forbes 50 Over 50 List in the category of Investment to honor 50 women who are shaping the future of finance, fueling high-growth businesses and forging a more innovative and inclusive financial future; to the American Bar Association Legal Technology Resource Center’s 2022 Women of Legal Tech list; and the Fastcase 50 of 2021 list, an annual award that recognizes 50 of the smartest, most courageous, innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders in the law. She was also named to the congressional candidate Maxwell Alejandro Frost’s 2022 Blockchain Advisory Council. In 2018, Prof. Evans received the inaugural Blockchain Enterprise Award in the category of Governance and Policy Leadership during the Blockchain Revolution Global Conference in Toronto.