“Your Data Is Not Noise—It’s Value. And It Belongs to You.”

Most platforms ask for your trust. Preska built one that earns it. She’s not disrupting for attention—she’s engineering a system where value returns to its rightful source: the individual.

Preska Thomas is not interested in adding to the noise of the tech world. She’s building something quieter. Smarter. More deliberate. A digital infrastructure rooted in transparency, human dignity, and equity. Her platform, DebitMyData, is more than a product. It’s a mechanism for change—and perhaps, the blueprint for the next evolution of the internet.

We sat down with her to talk about her journey, her philosophy, and the platform that’s starting to attract global attention—not with hype, but with substance.

Preska, DebitMyData isn’t just a product—it feels like a new social contract. Where did the vision begin?

Preska Thomas:
It began with a question I couldn’t stop asking: Why have we normalized giving away something so valuable—without knowing its worth? For over 30 years, I’ve worked in a high-risk strategy, where every piece of information is measured, analyzed, and protected like currency. I’ve watched billion-dollar decisions shift based on data intelligence. And yet, the people generating that data—the everyday users—are cut out of the equation.

DebitMyData was born from the need to correct that imbalance. Not with protest, but with architecture. I didn’t want to just point out what was broken. I wanted to design a better model—one where users become stakeholders in their digital presence. That’s where true transformation begins: not with rage, but with better tools.

So this isn’t just about privacy. It’s about redefining ownership?

Preska:
Exactly. Privacy, while essential, is reactive. Ownership is foundational. It shifts how value is perceived and exchanged. When we talk about data, we often frame it as something companies manage. But in reality, data is a reflection of human behavior, decision-making, and intent. It’s not just a byproduct—it’s a resource.

Ownership means we stop treating data as exhaust and start recognizing it as energy—something that powers markets, systems, and AI learning. Once people understand that, everything changes. It creates a new economic model where participation has direct reward, and where users gain not just protection, but participation.

How does DebitMyData bring that concept to life?

Preska:
DebitMyData is a user-first ecosystem that allows individuals to control, license, and profit from their own data. It’s a platform built with blockchain integrity, AI intelligence, and ethical clarity. It shows you what data is being collected, lets you decide how it’s shared, and directly connects you to potential buyers—brands, researchers, developers—under contracts that are transparent and traceable.

But it’s not just about revenue. It’s about restoring the idea that digital life can be participatory—not extractive. We’re trying to shift users from passive endpoints to empowered operators. That requires more than tech. It requires trust—and a cultural reset.

You’ve said before that you don’t build to “go viral”—you build to last. Can you expand on that?

Preska:
Virality is short-term noise. But systems that endure are built with discipline, respect, and deep foresight. DebitMyData wasn’t built in a sprint. It was engineered over years, by examining vulnerabilities in current infrastructures and asking: What would digital empowerment actually look like if it were designed with the user, not the investor, in mind?

We’ve seen too many platforms rush to scale before establishing real value. I didn’t want to create another tool that just feels good. I wanted to build a platform that is good—ethically, economically, and structurally. That takes time. But it’s the only way you build something that matters.

What would you say to someone who thinks this kind of system is too idealistic to work?

Preska:
Idealism only becomes naive when it’s not paired with architecture. DebitMyData is not a utopian vision—it’s a strategic response to a broken model. We have the tools: blockchain, AI, secure contracts, digital wallets. We have public awareness: users today are smarter, savvier, and more skeptical than ever before. The only thing missing was a platform that could tie it all together intelligently and ethically.

Idealism becomes power when it’s designed with logic. I’ve spent my life building systems that hold under pressure. This one does too. And it’s built to scale, adapt, and evolve without losing its soul.

Your background is incredibly multidisciplinary—cybersecurity, influence management, behavioral tech. How do all those pieces come together in this project?

Preska:
I’ve always approached problems from a systems level. Whether I’m working in digital defense, crisis strategy, or project management, my lens has always been: What invisible forces are shaping the visible ones?

DebitMyData brings all those disciplines together. The behavioral insights help us understand how users engage. Cybersecurity ensures the platform is sovereign and resilient. Strategic planning keeps the mission intact as we scale. And influence management? That’s what helps us change the narrative—not just around data, but around the value of being a person in a digital age.

This isn’t just a tech platform. It’s a recalibration of digital identity.

Let’s get conceptual for a moment. If a highly advanced civilization found your platform centuries from now, what would you hope they understand?

Preska:
I would hope they’d see that we attempted something profound: We chose to trust people with their own power.
Not because it was efficient. Not because it was profitable. But because it was right.

I hope they’d see that at a moment when digital life became commodified, we paused. We rethought. We rebuilt. And in doing so, we showed that technology doesn’t have to outpace humanity—it can elevate it.