Kaliya is a leading expert on blockchain and Identity also known as self-sovereign Identity. She served from 2012-2015 on the Management Council for the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group an Obama Administration effort to make the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace real. 2010, Founder, Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium. 2005, Co-Founder, Co-Producer, Facilitator, Internet Identity Workshop. Works with Planetwork to grow open standards-based infrastructure for citizens and organizations to connect outside of commercial silos/platforms. Inspiration to transform how the internet works comes from their work in the early 2000s and the paper they published in 2003: Augmented Social Network: Building Identity and Trust in the Next Generation Internet.

Has a parallel independent career designing and facilitating unconferences (interactive participant driven conferences) for a range of professional communities worldwide.

She has a Master of Science in Identity Management and Security from University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, focused on Political, Economic and Human Rights, University of California, Berkeley. She also played on their varsity water polo team and was a member of the Canadian National Water Polo Team.