Better Together: Women in Big Data™ Luncheon

The Women in Big Data Luncheon at the Strata Data event in New York City was held on Wednesday September 12, 2018.  It was sponsored by Intel, SAP and Women in Big Data, and over 200 guests attended the event. We had an engaging panel discussion by Clare Gollnick, Ziya Ma and Karuna Mukherjea, and Fadi Zuhayri served as the moderator.  

Fadi, Ziya, Karuna, Clare

The panel discussion topic was: How can technology be used to encourage diversity?

Key discussion Points

• Moving beyond the talk about diversity as a social topic, let’s talk about how we can use technology to achieve diversity. We don’t want our biases into the model.
• What is tech doing to help solve the problem of unconscious bias e.g. eliminating bias in talent recruiting, use of certain language in job post can prevent some kinds of people to apply.
• How can we eradicate unconscious bias in data, in Artificial Intelligent and Machine Learning (AI/ML) algorithms? One way to use open source and 3^rd party to validate the models to make sure no biases included (more of having independent parties).
• How can we address economic diversity and the democratization of AI? Diversity and inclusion not just the right thing to do but also good for business.

Panelists

 Clare Gollnick is the CTO and chief data scientist at Terbium Labs, an information security startup based in Baltimore, Maryland. As a statistician and engineer, Clare designs the algorithms that direct Terbium’s automated crawl of the dark web and leads the crawler engineering team. Previously, Clare was a neuroscientist. Her academic publications focus on information processing within neural networks and validation of new statistical methods. Clare holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from Georgia Tech and a BS in bioengineering from UC Berkeley.

Ziya Ma is vice president of the Software and Services Group and director of data analytics technologies at Intel, where she is responsible for optimizing big data solutions on the Intel architecture platform, leading open source efforts in the Apache community, and bringing about optimal big data analytics experiences for Intel customers. Her team works extensively with internal product teams, the open source community, the industry, and academia to further Intel’s efforts in the big data analytics field. She is also a cofounder of the Women in Big Data Forum. Ziya was honored as one of the “women of the decade in data and analytics” by the Women Economic Forum in 2018. Ziya holds a PhD and MS in computer science and engineering from Arizona State.

Karuna Mukherjea is senior director of product marketing at SAP, where she is responsible for the marketing for the SAP Leonardo portfolio that includes machine learning, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics. Her product marketing team drives success for these solutions in the marketplace through new product launches, product messaging, and evangelism with customers, partners, thought leaders, and analysts. They also support the execution of effective lead-generation programs through new business and customer-focused activities like events and PR. She has been with SAP since October 2008 working on an extensive portfolio of solutions in the Analytics and Emerging Technologies space. Previously, she worked in product strategy for key technology solutions to support high-value business processes at Oracle. Karuna holds a master’s degree in finance from the Rochester Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in commerce, accounting, and finance from Osmania University, and a bachelor’s in commerce and accounting from St. Francis College.

Moderator: Fadi Zuhayri, Director, Big Data Strategic Marketing at Intel