Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at CBI, and Co-founder of CBIx. Harvard Business School alum with 20+ years turning bold ideas into working products across banking, fintech, AI, and digital assets.
NFT collector, hip-hop head, and art enthusiast navigating multiple identities across web3 communities, Bitcoin Ordinals, and the occasional shisha session. There's always more to the book than the cover.
Giovanni Everduin – most people call him Gio – is a Harvard Business School alum (GMP21) and a true citizen of the world who has lived and worked across 10 countries spanning Europe, North America, Central America and the Middle East.
Currently the Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Commercial Bank International (CBI) in Dubai, where he cofounded CBIx – the bank’s independent Corporate VC and Innovation Lab subsidiary exploring AI, tokenized assets, Web3, gaming, and next-gen banking models.
Before CBI, Gio held senior roles at Emirates NBD and Accenture in London, and ran his own creative agency & consulting firm.
By day, Gio runs strategy and innovation for a bank. By night and over weekends, he exists across multiple identities in fundamentally different communities – from Bitcoin Ordinals maxis who'd lose it if they knew he works at a bank, to Ethereum collectors, Solana degens, and hip-hop heads.
His on-chain art collection includes 1/1 art pieces by artists like Tony Tafuro, No Legs, Scrog and Rupture – each representing a different facet of who he is across the real world, Discord, Telegram, and various SoFi platforms. His alter egos span an OMB, a Doodle, a ZMB, and a Bearmarketeer.
He also produces films and documentaries, has provided creative direction for fashion brands, and once produced an award-winning documentary on women's empowerment called "SHE". Outside of screens, you'll find him reading The Business of Fashion, going down HBR rabbit holes at 5AM, or collecting art that tells stories worth telling.
Accenture
Emirates NBD
Harvard Business School
Sui Foundation
Plume
Commercial Bank International
Tajikistan Ministry of Industry & New Technologies
Zypl.ai
Tumar Fund
United NationsAccentureEmirates NBDHarvard Business SchoolSui FoundationPlumeCommercial Bank InternationalTajikistan Ministry of Industry & New TechnologiesZypl.aiTumar FundUnited Nations
ArtsDAO
MonkeDAO
Monke Ventures
The Arts Club
ZMB
OMB
RTFKT
Pudgy PenguinsArtsDAOMonkeDAOMonke VenturesThe Arts ClubZMBOMBRTFKTPudgy PenguinsCo-founded CBI’s corporate venture capital and innovation lab as Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer – a three-year journey through board, risk, and regulatory approval to launch in 2025. The thesis: invest in the picks and shovels of digital finance.
Full case study →Took a leading advisory role steering QNB Group’s QCD Money Market Fund (QCDT) through to formal DFSA approval – the first tokenized money market fund approved in the DIFC, and the first in the Middle East backed by a major bank.
Full case study →As formal external adviser, supported a landlocked country’s run from national strategy to global stage: a UN General Assembly resolution on AI, a Regional AI Center in Dushanbe, and Area AI – the world’s first special economic zone dedicated to AI.
Full case study →As Chief People Officer of the GCC’s first shared services company, part of the founding team that scaled from 20 to 3,000 people in under three years. The transformation became a Harvard Business School case study. The operator credential behind everything that followed.
Full case study →
Each piece represents a different identity, community, or moment. Collected across chains, displayed without borders.
To predict the future of banking, you need to understand the future of everything
We are multi-dimensional beings. There is always more to the book than the cover
An AI prototype trained on Gio's public persona, writings, and talks. Ask me anything about banking innovation, Web3, or what it's like being a closeted DeFi maxi in a banker's suit.