“We shape the world around us by the words we use”: Remembering Brandon Dewitt

All of us at Tearsheet are deeply saddened by the passing of Brandon Dewitt, an innovator, kindred spirit, and pioneer. Over the years, we’ve met and spoken with Brandon many times, each only affirming the rarity of this special person and his mission.

In the early days of the internet, Brandon was one of the first technology minds to care about and dedicate his work to protecting privacy, consent, and user rights in the financial industry.

Throughout his career and finally as co-founder and CTO of MX, Brandon showed tenacity and creativity, believing firmly that innovating the financial space is the path to creating the world he wanted to see. He called for a restoration to the nobility of banking, and the building of a system that takes care of all its participants. 

We were lucky enough to have Brandon join our podcast and conferences on multiple occasions. In our DataDay Conference in 2020, he pointedly said, “We need to find a better word than ‘cross-selling’. I don’t think that word imbues the effective stewardship that’s involved in looking at all this data and picking the right product, at the right time, for the right person. Because if you can do that, you can change not only a person’s financial life, but their life as it relates to the stress they experience, the jobs they have accessibility to… You can influence the entire arc of where their life may go.” 

Today, one of our team members shared a saying of his that she never forgot, and one which we will remember him with as well: “We shape the world around us by the words we use.” 

May his memory be a blessing.