The 10 Most Influential Women in Technology

CREDITS

EDITORIAL D iversity is critical in tech as it enables organizations to create a better and safer environment that considers everyone, not just a single section of society. The year 2020 has played a big role in gearing women to step up in leadership roles.

Women have a vision for diversity in their company, whether in form of considering people, technology, transformation, or innovation. Women have a nature to understand the leadership role better and lead by change. And change requires transformation and innovation, while innovation requires diversity. The whole picture works as a cycle and circles around women leaders in tech.

A report from McKinsey reveals that diverse companies perform better, hire better talents, have more engaged employees and retain workers better than companies that do not focus on diversity and inclusion. Despite this, women remain widely underrepresented in IT roles.

For more than a decade now, the US Department of Labour has been reporting numbers that women make up less than 50% of the workplace and hold under 25% of the Information Technology (IT) positions. The World Economic Forum also provides a glimpse into disparity, publishing the Global Gender Gap Index. In 2020, the Global Gender Gap score stands at 68.6%, narrowing the gap from previous years. However, the remaining 31.4% is where the society has to do homework to bring it to null.

Technology is a space that men dominated for a long time. From the cultural belief that Computer Science is a ‘subject for boys’ to the assumption and discrimination that women experience in the field, it can be challenging for women at every stage of their careers to thrive in

tech. Nevertheless, many high-performing women persist and succeed as leaders despite the gender biases pitted against them. In 2019, 29% of senior management roles were held by women, which is the highest number on record, and 87% of global businesses had at least one woman to fill leadership roles in technology and innovation. Women are naturally empathetic and can contextually apply emotional intelligence to manage people effectively. This explains why women leaders across the world have demonstrated their abilities to build a safe, open and conducive work environment. At the same time, research has found that female directors tend to be less conformist and more likely to express their independent views than male directors because they do not belong to old-boy networks, which in turn reflects when the organization makes strategic decisions.

Some of the key barriers for women that still need to be addressed are old stereotypes, fewer connections, bias and discrimination, and lack of flexibility, according to AAUW. While these are some of the well-known sloppy grounds, women at higher positions also face unspoken challenges every day. For them, getting the recognition for the position, being heard at meetings and being themselves without changing for the entity or the society is the primal achievement. Despite all the defiance, women in tech lead as trailblazers and innovators who are chosen because they have the unique lens to their respective companies helping to push innovation forward by unleashing economic wealth as a result.

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PUJA DAS Content Analyst

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DECEMBER 2020

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Albane Bruyas Scaleway

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Sofia Rufin 5Discovery Virtual Learning

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Hi-Tech Intelligent Services LLC

Focus GTS

Zoovu

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Therapy Brands

mypensionID

IDC

Aigul Tokayeva

Brittany Fox

Junel Oberholzer

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Kathy Brown

CONTENTS 30

AI Algorithms Proliferates Gender Bias during the Recruitment Process of Women

Uber Technologies

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Femtech Industry: A Promising Future Ahead

Kimberly O’Loughlin

Lisa Lyon

Ritu Jyoti

Driving AI Supremacy to Develop Next-Gen Customer-Centric Products

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ber’s mission is to create opportunity through movement.

The company started in 2009 to provide customers access to a ride at the touch of a button. Today, more than 15 billion trips later, Uber is building products to get people closer to where they want to be.

By changing how people, food, and things move through cities, Uber is a platform that opens up the world to new possibilities.

Kathy Brown serves as the Head of the Cognitive Computing Platform at Uber Technologies. She is leading the research, development, and deployment of AI technologies to power next-generation surfaces in voice and chat. Prior to Uber, she served as Chief Data Scientist and VP of the Cognitive Computing Center at 247. ai, leading a cross-geo team of over 200

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engineers and scientists in the development of big data and omnichannel predictive technologies in the areas of AI, NLP, online predictive sales, and personalization. Kathy’s work has been featured in the book “Design of Multimodal Mobile Interfaces.”

Kathy received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Davis. She started her career at Lockheed Martin as a Researcher and Principal Investigator on Government Contract R&D programs dealing with the development of new surveillance technologies. After that, she joined Nuance Communications, where she rose to the position of Director of Product Solutions. The team she managed received numerous industry awards and was responsible for the launch of numerous groundbreaking products.

Kathy Brown Head of the Cognitive Computing Platform Uber Technologies

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Growth Through Continuous Learning

Kathy has been on the front lines leading Uber into the next generation of AI conversational technology, successfully launching the first Uber Virtual Assistants for voice and chat. This technology has enabled Uber to offer real-time personalized experiences in addition to achieving cost savings.

The most significant achievement that has shaped Kathy’s journey to becoming a technology leader occurred very early in her career. She pushed herself to pursue an advanced degree in engineering. After she finished her Masters, she earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She admits it was tough as she had to work very hard, but the worst thing about the struggle was the feelings of isolation and uncertainty as she was one of only a handful of women in her class. She kept doubting herself and wondered if she didn’t belong there. Kathy says, “I don’t know the number of times I told myself that I was crazy. It’s only now

that I realize the significance that experience had on my life and career.”

During those years, Kathy discovered her passion for new technology, doing research, and creating innovative solutions.

She transformed herself from doubting to gaining confidence and belonging in the program, competing right alongside the men. “Of course, I didn’t get to that transformation by myself.

I had an awesome male mentor who was my thesis advisor, Dr. Ralph Algazi. Dr. Algazi never wavered in his resolve to get me to graduate, and he gave me the confidence and support to see me through,” she adds.

Balancing Hardships to Encourage Excellence Kathy doesn’t deny that her career in tech leadership has been full of primal challenges. Even today, she observes the jaw drops from men when they see the three letters “Ph.D.” after her name, followed by their interrogation of what her degree could possibly be in. Kathy then notices an even bigger jaw drop when she informs them it’s in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Sometimes she even has to politely endure comments like, “You gotta be kidding me.”

One of the worst moments during the course of her career occurred when she had to deliver a technical presentation at a senior leadership meeting in a small start-up company that included one man who had publicly admonished women for attempting to compete in technical fields. As he explained,

women just don’t have the aptitude. At that point, Kathy felt confident enough that she actually enjoyed the challenge of presenting in front of him. In fact, she recalls delivering most of the talk directly to him. In the end, he shook her hand and congratulated her for executing a good job.

Kathy reveals that there are still men in the industry, even at higher levels, who hold some very primitive views on women.

She has found it emotionally destructive for a woman to ignore and not acknowledge her anger and frustration when she needs to deal with those views. Instead, Kathy suggests that women must acknowledge their anger and turn it into action plans for how they can deliver an even bigger impact.

Adopting Transformational Leadership Kathy believes that transformational leaders must be willing to take risks, adapt quickly, and not be afraid of failure.

Throughout her career, Kathy had to undertake risks, pursue, experiment, and launch new products and technologies. She achieved success in her initiatives by constantly assessing the

risk and making quick decisions when she needed to coursecorrect. “No transformation is capable of being planned perfectly at initiation, so agility and nimbleness are key,” she admits. Through that strategy, Kathy considers herself fortunate to be at the heart of some key advances in the industry.

Incorporating Innovative Mindset Amid Challenging Times

Peeyush Nahar VP of Technology

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uber.com/in

As per Kathy, innovation has been a driving force in Uber. The company is all about raising the bar on the technology and features it offers to customers in today’s rapidly-changing world. In 2020, Uber illustrated this by investing in and expediting its delivery products when the world shut down, because delivering meals to the home was more important than ever.

It also meant quickly building new technology to verify that both riders and drivers wore face masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19 and keep the community safe and healthy. When it comes to safety, Kathy asserts that the job is never done, and at Uber, the team is constantly looking to do more to make our communities safer.

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Drawing Relevant Insights from Disruptive Technologies Disruptive technologies such as AI and Deep Learning are at the core of emerging products across countless industries today, from transportation to social media and education. Being a leader in this industry is exciting and opens up immense opportunities for innovation.

However, amid the excitement, Kathy warns that one must exercise caution and be cognizant of the risks of AI, especially in privacy and human rights. The world needs strong leaders in this space who can innovate while responsibly assessing the risk vs. benefits tradeoff.

Kathy Brown

Albane Bruyas

Head of the Cognitive Computing Platform, Uber Technologies

COO, Scaleway

Kathy Brown serves as the Head of the Cognitive Computing Platform at Uber Technologies, where she leads the research, development, and deployment of AI technologies to power next-generation surfaces in voice and chat. Kathy’s work has been featured in the book “Design of Multimodal Mobile Interfaces.

Kathy received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Davis.

Albane Bruyas, COO at Scaleway, is responsible for global operations, and the whole supply chain of the company’s six data centers across Europe, from R&D to its go-to-market strategy and fleet maintenance. She prides to lead CSR projects within Scaleway that align with the company’s vision and serve as a driver for more effective, ethical and meaningful practices within the digital sector.

uber.com/in

scaleway.com

Sofia Rufin

Aigul Tokayeva

BRITTANY FOX

Caitlin Smallwood

CEO, Hi-Tech Intelligent Services LLC

Founder and Managing Partner, Focus GTS

VP, Data Science and Engineering, Netflix

Sofia Rufin is the CEO of 5Discovery Virtual Learning. After spending a long and rich international career in IT and working for different software companies in sales and project management, she decided to orient her career to the leadership arena. Sofia founded 5Discovery to offer a new innovating experience to the learning world.

Aigul Tokayeva is the Founder and primary decision-maker of Hi-Tech Intelligent Services.

Before founding Hi-Tech Intelligent Services, she served as the Head of Chemical Testing Lab of Amitex Astana LLP, one of Kazakhstan’s leading pipe technology companies. Aigul had also held several senior technical and management positions at Kazakhstan National Railway Company.

As the Founder and Managing Partner of Focus GTS, Brittany oversees the company’s daily operations as well as the IT staffing and recruitment for data science and artificial intelligence.

Prior to entering the tech space in staffing and recruiting, Brittany was in real estate, selling luxury homes in NYC.

Caitlin Smallwood is the Vice President for Science and Analytics at Netflix since 2010. Her passion about data and the field of data science at large is clear as she participates often in podcasts and gives talks about the need for new data scientists to explore the myriad avenues of the discipline rather than limiting themselves to what comes the most naturally to everyone in the field.

5discovery.com

hi-techintelligentservices.com

focusgts.com

netflix.com

Junel Oberholzer

Kimberly O’Loughlin

Lisa Lyon

Ritu Jyoti

Chief Customer Officer, Zoovu

CEO, Therapy Brands

Founder, mypensionID

Program Vice President, Artificial Intelligence Research, IDC

Junel Oberholzer serves as Chief Customer Officer of Zoovu. She leads a global customer team of 40+ across 9 locations around the world. Her core focus is driving adoption of the company’s solution, customer retention, and ensuring their customers, who are some of the world’s biggest retailers and brands, gain maximum value out of the Zoovu platform.

Kimberly O’Loughlin joined Therapy Brands as the CEO in February 2020. Prior to this, she served as President of Greenway Health, a healthcare IT company assisting the ambulatory market, where she helped the company win the “KLAS Most Improved Ambulatory EHR” category award twice for Revenue Cycle Management.

Lisa Lyon is the innovative and inspired leader of mypensionID and the MD of Target Professional Services for over 20 years. Her focussed business mindset has developed target professional services into a leading Pensions Tracing and Data Verification company. Lisa shares that the concept of mypensionID emerged aiming to create a secure and straightforward verification service.

As VP, Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Automation Research at IDC, Ritu Jyoti is responsible for leading the development of IDC’s thought leadership for AI Research and management of the Worldwide AI Software research team. Her research focuses on the state of enterprise AI efforts and global market trends for the rapidly evolving AI and ML innovations and ecosystem.

zoovu.com

therapybrands.com

mypensionid.co.uk

idc.om

Unlocking Future Opportunities Kathy affirms Uber to have been at the forefront and the leader of the gig economy since it was founded in 2009. The company has achieved this position through its strong culture and commitment to invest in innovative technologies. Its engineering, science, and R&D teams are staffed with outstanding talent and innovate daily. With their thirst for knowledge and cutting-edge technology, Uber will continue to dominate this market and expand to offer new products and services that carry us into the future. Kathy is incredibly excited to be a part of the technology revolution that Uber is leading and be in a company that empowers her to bring her full self and talents to work every day. “In the area of Cognitive Computing, we have made significant advances this year and have even more exciting technology innovations planned for 2021. Stay Tune!” she reveals.

CEO, 5Discovery Virtual Learning

Wisdom for Leaders of Tomorrow Kathy strongly recommends that budding female leaders should shape their careers through building knowledge. Nothing is more profound in technology than being an expert in one’s field of discipline. Any lack of confidence is always remedied with knowledge. She recommends to take courses in the free time, pursue an advanced degree, spend free time reading journals and articles in one’s area of expertise, and acquire a penchant for wanting to learn about all innovations across all industries.

She emphasizes that one must stretch oneself daily to learn. Also, with knowledge comes the confidence to make strong decisions, take risks, and achieve success.

Further, Kathy points out that it is critical that the emerging female leader find a mentor. According to her, it is essential that the mentor has indepth knowledge and experience in technology and industry culture, and it’s ok if the person is male. She encourages budding leaders to be honest with the mentor and be willing to take their advice even during the most insecure, darkest moments.

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Bringing Advances to Business Operations Through Cuttingedge Cloud Solutions

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Albane Bruyas COO Scaleway 14

caleway is the second leading European cloud services provider and pioneer in the bare metal sector, supplying a range of flexible, costeffective, reliable, secure and sustainably powered cloud infrastructure services for professionals. The company is the only cloud services provider offering private data center colocation and infrastructure, dedicated servers for maximum control and punch, and elastic public cloud services.

Scaleway delivers these offerings with

its modern, S3-compatible ecosystem of solutions, including a rolling up-to-date Kubernetes and Terraform support. Having 20 years of extensive expertise, Scaleway controls the whole value chain from developing and deploying dedicated servers to eco-designing and managing cuttingedge data centers.

Today, Scaleway’s reputation has grown around the world, serving clients in over 160 countries with six data centers located in France, the Netherlands and Poland.

A Transformational Leader Redefining Business Success Albane Bruyas is the COO of Scaleway. She is responsible for the global operations and whole supply chain of the company’s six data centers across Europe, from R&D to its go-to-market strategy and fleet

maintenance. Albane is gratified to lead CSR projects at Scaleway that are aligned with the company’s vision and serve as an enabler for more effective, ethical, and meaningful practices within the digital sector.

Albane always strives to develop and deliver technologies that make sense, driven by Scaleway’s

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business strategy, growing customers’ demands for responsible and efficient products, and profitable revenue growth. One of her latest projects involves spearheading a major strategic shift in the transformation of Scaleway’s IT and Operations.

Albane began her career with marketing in the luxury industry. During that time in this sector, she met numerous inspiring women and learned to embody key values such as rigor and excellence. Following this, Albane became a purchasing consultant before entering the tech industry. Right from the start, she saw the tech industry as a field wherein she could make a difference, not only as a woman, but also as a leader.

Albane believes that as a key pillar of the digital world, Scaleway has a considerable responsibility towards society.

“It is up to us to ensure that the new economy will be fair for women, giving young people a chance, and that people with disabilities have a place so that together we can build a technological society which resembles us,” she emphasized.

Scaleway is working tirelessly toward this objective by participating in numerous initiatives such as 50 in Tech, Startup Weekend Women, and Les Plombiers du numérique and through its own startup program that supports its impressive French and European entrepreneurs. The company places much importance on working with inclusive and disability-friendly companies.

For us, at Scaleway, a cloud that makes sense is a cloud which first and foremost respects both the environment and the society in which it is scaling.

Albane Bruyas

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scaleway.com

Understanding the Market Demand to Drive Innovation As a purchaser, Albane quickly understood that the key to success is understanding markets, the specificities of suppliers, and internal client needs. It is about identifying the innovations that will meet market needs and keeping an eye on trends to stay ahead of the game.

According to her, driving a company to success requires identifying the right innovations to aim for, ensuring they will be useful for customers, having the right price and costs, and packaging it all with effective and adapted customer service.

This can be achieved by making sure that all teams are working together. That is why Albane implements new and optimized processes.

Albane works with different teams together to foster a united vision of where they are going. They work together to align objectives across the company and implement an optimized action plan and workflow. Albane has worked on implementing new processes to expedite and unleash innovation, ensuring that the company has the best time to market for its products and prioritizes the market fit. “When innovations are disruptive, one thing to remember is that you

also need to work with the market and bring the products to future users rather than the other way around”, she asserts.

Bringing Change Through Technology and Effective Leadership Albane believes that modern-day technologies are not only disruptive, but they also lead to normalization. A computer will think the same way as any other computer with the same code. The only difference will be the order of logical tests relying on the developers behind the specific code. Thus, she contemplates that innovation that will lead to something really performant is not sufficient. Every company today with adequate financial resources can create the most performant product. The difference and success will be the innovation that makes sense for customers. This is why Scaleway is defined as a cloud provider that makes sense and pays attention to finding (behind any new performant software or hardware) the sense for its customers.

Albane further adds that making sense is not enough to be innovative. Scaleway is known for being innovative because it has been disruptive and is always close to its customers to understand what they need, and follow up after the latest technical performance. She explains, “Being disruptive means assuming that bringing difference is bringing value even if the market doesn’t seem ready or aware. Our job is to demonstrate the benefits of our innovations to others.”

Albane further says that leadership is evolving with all these new technologies that are called communityship. Being more and more digital, having to face lockdown periods and an increase in remote working, demands leaders to be able to share and get their team together by using digital tools.

Moreover, in these periods to come, and with the evolution of employees (Generation Z, etc.) that people have seen in these last few years, leadership has to be more sensitive and humanized than before. She also asserts that leaders these days should be respected for their competencies and their abilities to make decisions, as well as increasingly be appreciated for their people skills.

Unfolding Leadership Edge Speaking on the must-have leadership qualities, Albane accentuates that a transformational leader needs to have a clear vision for the long-term goal and the path they must take to achieve those goals. This might seem obvious, but it is not a simple mindset to embody. Leaders must keep their teams and partners at the forefront of everything they do.

They also need to have a clear vision of their targets as well as support to be able to adapt and react to new challenges, 17

situations and ideas.

She stresses that transformation doesn’t occur alone.

There will be people by a leader’s side, whether in the same company or the market as a whole, and he/she should work as partners with the same goals rather than giving orders.

A leader must also be able to listen and ask questions.

Transformation doesn’t come easily to everyone; it can be complicated. But by working together to foresee and resolve obstacles in advance, a leader can effectively achieve targets.

Albane is convinced that leaders have to lead by example.

She always strives to do her best and encourages others to perform the same.

Remarkable Career Exposure Towards Success Working in multiple diverse sectors allowed Albane to identify the best practices of each new industry. It was always a learning opportunity for her. Every sector had its specificities that brought considerable value to the way she approached leadership within a company. Whenever a person starts from the beginning, he/she is required to recognize the benefits of humility as it teaches them never to stop learning.

As Albane began her career in the luxury sector, she then became a consultant after completing a degree in purchasing. She considers that when working as a purchaser, a person is often far away from customers. However, thanks to her experience as a consultant, Albane was always able to keep a customer-centric mindset that allowed her to have a much greater impact. Her degree and initial experiences in the retail and media industry also showed her that profitability should always be a top priority and that financial caution should never be overlooked. These lessons are not clandestine to management practices, but all too often they are forgotten by those who have day-to-day responsibilities.

“Being a leader means transmitting these key business values and ensuring teams around you are following your path. This is what I strive to achieve every day,” says Albane.

She is also convinced that innovation is all around us. People often jump to the conclusion that innovation is the scope of R&D or the target of developers. Albane learned much about this, thanks to the excellent managers she had worked with.

She has seen the results and is now convinced that every level of a business can bring innovative solutions forward and should be supported in doing so.

People need to be encouraged to express their ideas and empowered to nurture them. These hundreds or even thousands of ideas are the best way to make a company increasingly efficient, and therefore innovative and profitable.

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The Future of Cloud Computing According to Albane, public clouds are still in the initial stages of their development, as 80% of the world’s IT is not yet in the cloud. The market – from now on – should be considered as a commodity market. Scaleway believes that the future lies in a demand-side multi-cloud approach, giving cloud integrators and clients the ability to easily deploy on any cloud across an array of cloud providers.

Businesses will also be mainly driven by IoT growth. IoT is consistently growing into billions of endpoint devices from smartphones and smart homes to digital sensors, and from medical equipment to smart cities. It results in huge quantities of data being fed upstream to the cloud. Edge computing comes into play here. Enterprises are also going to cloud edge as localized data centers with a new form of powerful servers and fast storage.

Certainly, the cloud computing evolution is part of the environmental equation that modern civilization has to solve.

For Scaleway, a cloud that makes sense is a cloud which first and foremost respects both the environment, and the society in which it is scaling. The company has developed unique data center cooling systems with one of the best environmental performances in the world. Scaleway’s vision is that cloud providers will have to follow it on the path of environmental responsibility both in terms of carbon footprints and water usage.

Today, Scaleway is the second biggest European cloud provider and has an excellent position as a responsible, disruptive, French and European innovative cloud company.

Inspiring Women Leaders of Tomorrow Albane expresses that every leader has her unique qualities.

Recognizing strengths, as well as weaknesses, and understanding how they can play together, is the best way to improve. Along with technical expertise, leaders must be aware of what is happening in their organizations and their sectors. This is crucial as it helps them understand, innovate and evolve. Additionally, each leader, especially women leaders, should be careful not to fall into the trap of imposter syndrome. “Intellectual curiosity, perpetual improvement, confidence in your work and your competencies is the path to leadership,” she stated.

Powering the Development of Soft Skills Through Virtual Reality

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Sofia Rufin CEO 5Discovery Virtual Learning 20

Discovery, 5 for the 5 senses, is the first platform of soft skills training in Virtual Reality. The company offers a wide range of out-of-the-shelf training modules integrating the best methodologies from the personal and professional development sphere.

5Discovery’s mission is to support people to augment their capabilities using immersive technologies. This is especially crucial in the VUCA world, an ever-changing landscape where agility, social interactions, resilience, communication, and emotional intelligence are the key to evolution.

Public speaking and pitching, negotiation, conflict management, interview preparation, media training, stress management, emotional intelligence, and disability or diversity awareness are some of 5Discovery’s modules that create engagement through emotions and realism.

It has been scientifically proven that immersive gamification with VR facilitates the learning curve by putting participants into actions, interactions, and emotions. This trend is growing relentlessly, such as the zeal to learn and grow. Thus, soft skills VR training means a rise in the ROI of training, which is clearly stated in PWC’s analysis of July 2020, “The effectiveness of Virtual Reality Softskills training in the Enterprise.”

An Insightful Leader Encouraging Virtual Learning Sofia Rufin is the CEO of 5Discovery Virtual Learning.

After spending a long and rich international career in IT and working for different software companies in sales and project management, she decided to orient her career to the leadership arena.

Fascinated by the personal development world, Sofia has been certified to distinct methodologies such as the process communication model, conflict dynamics model, positive psychology, mindfulness, agility and leadership program, and coaching model. She also acted as a professor and coach for the Executive MBA of the IMT Institute in France.

When Sofia saw that there was a lack of solutions to boost people’s self-development, she founded 5Discovery to offer a new innovating experience to the learning world. She asserts that soft skills are the most imperative asset for human capital, today, and VR can leverage them effectively.

Delivering Innovative VR Training for Soft Skills Development 5Discovery always begins its development processes with pilots by targeting a selected group representative and enriches its immersive VR experiences with their feedback and proposals. The company’s pragmatical

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The future of VR content will have to align with the recent changes of the society: humanoriented, skills and agility oriented, serving the need to evolve in a sustainable planet.

Sofia Rufin

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5discovery.com

approach often confronts technology with human sensitivity.

5Discovery also listens to the changes in the world, what people say, like, or dislike to create new experiences and environments.

For example, in today’s society, inclusion and collective intelligence are key accelerators for growth. To this effort, the company has developed a series of training VR Modules to recruit people with cognitive or psychic issues such as Asperger syndrome, bipolarity, or earing issues while bypassing pre-judgments and bias.

Moreover, 5Discovery has different scenes in VR to identify the singularity of disabled people and facilitate relationships and communication with them. The company also works on embodiment processes in partnership with universities to increase awareness.

Making Relationships Stronger with Technology Sofia believes that digital innovation helps to create a connection with people more than ever. The current pandemic period points it out meaningfully. Along with in-person human relations, digital solutions are the key element to create and maintain relationships both in challenging and thriving times. Yet, technology should be 100% human-oriented and serve human interests, especially in the current ever-changing world.

Sofia further asserts that a positive mindset and empathy are some of the core soft skills that are the foundation of humanity’s evolution. VR capabilities and magic approach should serve this objective, and 5Discovery does this perfectly.

Victorious Leadership Attributes Sofia exclaims that a transformational leader must demonstrate: » Agility, the capability to adapt to diverse situations and » personality types. » Empathy to understand people and define the best relational » approach. » Communication skills to engage people with one’s style by being natural, instead of versing to stereotypes. » Creativity and visualization to create a world that fits both one’s » dreams and concrete expectations. » Serendipity, as it is not possible to plan everything but essential » to believe in core values and follow up one’s dreams.

She also states, “Being yourself, boost your self-confidence and dare to do what you want.”

Crafting Success Over Challenges According to Sofia, managing different styles of people, from different cultures, at the international scale was one of the most vital challenges for her, especially when she was located in the UK, coming from France. For her, team cohesion and team spirit were significant priorities, exclusively with members working remotely from their home offices in different countries.

She also highlights that she did not find intricacies to lead a team of male pre-sales or salespeople in IT. “If you demonstrate good management skills and the necessary authority to be respected, there is a total acceptance, especially when you show qualities such as active listening, empathy, and nonjudgment,” says Sofia. in many scenarios, Sofia had to fight against some stereotypes regarding gender among the executive teams and prove that a woman can be a great leader than a man with her particularities and personality. “We, as women, have probably to prove more than a man in a leadership role, at least in some organizations,” she said.

The Future of VR Learning 5Discovery explores various new ways to support people in their personal development. The company believes that there is still more to do to support disabled people, senior people, and in health management.

In the education field, 5Discovery already proposes real-time VR Rooms, where students or trainees can interact with each other and learn from the immersive context with pedagogical tools.

When a person is confronted with a concrete environment, he/ she learns faster and better with enthusiasm.

Moreover, 5Discovery is reinforcing its partnerships with prominent universities’ laboratories to build efficient VR environments with intelligent interactions and experiences. For instance, the company currently is investing in VR Rooms to stimulate creativity by providing specific tools like Dschools but in a virtual mode.

Artificial intelligence will also help design tailor-made learning experiences and take training to the next step by individualizing the experience.

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Shaping the Future of Enterprises with Disruptive Technology Solutions

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Aigul Tokayeva CEO Hi-Tech Intelligent Services LLC 24

i-Tech Intelligent Services LLC is an IT and business consulting company that provides IT, cybersecurity services, and business consulting.

With a passion for adding value and creating something meaningful for its clients, the company ensures transparency of IT processes for enterprises. It also offers a full range of ERP and EPM implementation services and a full-cycle software development service specifically designed for a business, data warehouse modeling, and the digital transformation of business.

The company offers complex software solutions for automation and optimization of business processes in manufacturing and financial institutions along with cybersecurity services. The most popular services of Hi-tech Intelligent are penetration testing (pentests) and Security Operations Center (SOC). The company is developing its penetration testing services in several directions by testing the depth of automation. Along with its partners, Hi-tech Intelligent has developed a unique vulnerability scanners aggregator, which combines about 700 vulnerability scanners of other vendors. The aggregator allows the company to reduce the manual work of finding and analyzing vulnerabilities significantly.

Services like cloud infrastructure security auditing, deep

SaaS, API security testing, and higher analysis make Hi-Tech intelligent unique in the market. The company is also expanding its presence in vertical markets as it has a deep expertise in industrial security, SCADA security, automotive security, banks, blockchain, and healthcare data security.

An Experienced Leader Aigul Tokayeva is the Founder and primary decisionmaker of Hi-Tech Intelligent Services. She received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Ecology from Eurasian National University. Additionally, her MBA degree in Finance from Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA, added a feather in her cap with more than 13 years of working experience in operating and managerial positions.

Before founding Hi-Tech Intelligent Services, Aigul served as the Head of Chemical Testing Lab of Amitex Astana LLP, one of Kazakhstan’s leading pipe technology companies. Later, she served as Senior Process and Health & Safety Engineer (HSE) Polyethylene and isolated pipes plant at Tera Group LTD. Aigul had also held several senior technical and management positions at Kazakhstan National Railway Company.

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Overcoming Challenges with Hard work Aigul faced significant hardships when she started her business. She was scared of the new challenges and responsibilities for people who started working with her. Aigul had to work hard to earn people’s respect and recognition as a leader.

Companies that adopt disruptive technologies will significantly enhance their performance and productivity. Transformation of digital technology will provide new opportunities for job creation.

Aigul Tokayeva

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hi-techintelligentservices.com

Building the Organization Culture Aigul believes that every transformational leader has to possess the ability to decide and have a vision for the future.

As an entrepreneur, Aigul is focused on empowering and leading employees who are valuable assets to the company.

The company’s goal is to work as a team to get outstanding outcomes, performance, make and add value to the company and society.

Automation of the process also can boost productivity and improve predictions, outcomes, and optimization.

Leaders have tremendous opportunities to embrace the transformation and performance from data, analytics, and digitization in artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and machine learning.

Aigul suggests that leaders should revamp and revise current business models leveraging the power of data analytics, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies. She advises that leaders should also use new technologies with the perspective of job creation to provide new opportunities.

There are various unique types of work, not foreseen at the time, she adds.

Automating Security Services with Cloud Solutions Aigul anticipates that the future of the company and industry lies in further automation, digitalization of organization, security processes, operations to reduce manual work and

Providing Training to Employees about Emerging Technologies Hi-Tech Intelligent is continually adopting an innovative approach to embed analytics capabilities in the company.

The company focuses on learning the basics about innovation, cutting-edge technology and tools, and applying them for the organization’s growth.

Stimulating Productivity with Disruptive Technologies Aigul feels that disruptive technology is changing the world dramatically, and a leader’s role is significant in those processes. “The main goal is improving technological processes and providing more value to the customer by anticipating and solving future problems,” she says.

Aigul believes that companies that adopt disruptive technologies will significantly enhance performance.

leverage artificial intelligence wherever possible. For example, in cloud technologies, Infrastructure-as-Code approaches are being developed. Information security trends are not lagging, and Security-as-Code strategies are evolving as well.

Hi-tech Intelligent strives to automate its security services, package them into solutions, and make them available to a wide range of users. It has talented software developers with an information security background and security experts with software development and cloud experience. Therefore, the company looks confident about its future and hopes to take a significant market share of SaaS and cloud security solutions and services.

Taking Risks and Delivering Better Outcomes Aigul advises that a leader must be passionate about what an individual does and works for the result. She suggests that instead of being afraid of taking risks and taking actions, the leader should believe in oneself.

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Femtech Industry: A Promising Future Ahead

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n recent years, the technological field has taken revolutionary steps to balance gender disparities.

It has led to the advent of a female-centric health technology market that utilises tech as the proponent for women’s health and overall wellness.

Femtech generally refers to software, diagnostics, products, and services that use technology to support women’s health. The term itself was originally coined by Ida Tin, the Founder of Clue, a period tracking app, who introduced it during her discussions with investors and accidentally created the new category.

The femtech industry is comparatively young. Although it is still primarily underfunded, experts predict that it will grow exponentially in the future. Its market potential is estimated to be around a whopping USD 50 billion in 2025 to include more topics in women’s health and technology.

As mention earlier, the femtech sector is primarily concerned with addressing the entire lived experience of women. Innovations in this category usually fall into one of the below categories: » Menstruation and period care products » Fertility and birth control » Pelvic health » Menopause » Chronic conditions and hormonal disorder » Sexual wellness » Breast feeding

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» General healthcare » Pregnancy and post pregnancy The mainstream popularity of femtech arose after creating the first period and fertility tracking app in 2016.

Since then, the concept of digital women’s health has been integrated into healthcare strategies to encourage women inclusion.

Factors behind the Success of Femtech Various aspects have helped propel the agenda of femtech. More women are opting for tech roles that were traditionally held by men. As this representation grows, awareness of health issues, which significantly affect women, is increased. It has always been global healthcare providers’ mission to develop strategies that improve penetration into middle and lowincome countries.

Infectious diseases are increasing in prevalence among women in several regions that have led to an upsurge of funding. Financial donations and grants of this nature work to digitalise women’s health. Women across the world can access several services and products because of femtech. Some companies operate a telemedicine app that provides free or paid consultations and provides prescriptions.

Femtech as an Innovative Crossroad As many entrepreneurs venturing into female

technologies increase, women are becoming more discerning about the products they use on their bodies. Femtech ventures to promote innovative substitutes to educate and destigmatize issues for girls and women on a global scale while promoting environmentalism. Today, there are numerous startups, policy formations, and tech enterprises that design and develop female wear.

For example, corporations are using AI-powered moulding machines to mass-produce biodegradable disposable or reusable tech gadgets for period care like menstrual cups so that they can reduce the colossal waste burden. These hygiene products are projected to minimise economic and environmental costs significantly while helping achieve the UN 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs) of 5 and 6.

Challenges Faced by the Femtech Sector For all the strides being made in the digital world, femtech still faces a lot of constraints. Women living in urban areas are more likely to have access to internet and mobile phone connectivity as compared to the women living in remote areas. It is straightforward to access people who are educated and more receptive to change than it is to the majority of the population in India who cannot access education that allows them to accept the challenges that they are facing at such a rapid space.

It is the responsibility of new-age, female-oriented health companies to mobilise efforts to reach out to women amongst the masses. They must do their bit to contribute towards

busting myths and clarifying taboos that exist around issues like menstruation and menstrual hygiene, fertility and reproductive health by educating them, and encouraging them to voice their problems. It gives even more of an opportunity to shatter myths, correct assumptions and clarify doubts that have pervaded for centuries.

Despite these challenges, there has been many press coverage and social campaigns that have played significant roles in spreading awareness on sanitation, menstruation, mental health, reproductive health and fertility, especially towards those living urban and semi-urban areas.

The Future of Femtech There are currently a few hundred startups in the femtech marketplace. Their primary focus is on women-based care like fertility tracking and pregnancy apps. A notable percentage of these entrepreneurial endeavours are owned and run by women.

Seeing more investment from healthcare venture capitalists is anticipated and it will shape the femtech industry. Within a forecast period of ten years and with the help of affordable and accessible technology, the service segment is speculated to expand. Emerging global economies will also enhance the spread of smart medical devices and wearables. There will also be the development of more apps and products due to an increase in research and funding towards general women’s health.

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Offering World-Class Recruitment Services For An Effective IT Career Move

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ocus GTS is a specialty tech staffing agency and placement firm with a focus on sectors including IT solutions, artificial intelligence and data science, digital transformation, and cloud services.

Founded by Brittany Fox and Dave Fox in January 2018, Focus GTS brings a creative and consultative approach to support both its clients and candidates. As a niche tech staffing agency, the company understands finding the right talent and a new job, especially in a niche area can be extremely challenging.

Focus GTS ranks in the top 1% of all staffing companies and was ranked as one of the fastest-growing staffing companies in South Florida.

Brittany Fox Founder & Managing Partner Focus GTS

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An Exemplary Leader As the Founder and Managing Partner of Focus GTS, Brittany oversees the company’s daily operations as well as the IT staffing and recruitment for data science and artificial intelligence. Prior to entering the tech space in staffing and recruiting, Brittany was in real estate, selling luxury homes in NYC. She worked with one of the top ten teams in all of New York City. She has helped people with some of the most significant decisions they encounter in their life, like purchasing a home and finding a place to work.

Building an Innovation Culture Brittany says that Focus GTS has a weekly meeting called innovation. Typically, Brittany drives the meeting to see how the company can better meet its clients’ needs and create raving fans.

Technology to Redefine Future Leadership Brittany believes that disruptive technologies have made the leader’s job easier for those who adapt well.

Transformational leaders are aware of the fact that change is part of the process. As the world is evolving more rapidly, leaders should always be at the forefront and expecting these changes. “At Focus GTS, we are constantly asking ourselves what technology could disrupt our industry?” she mentioned.

Effective Leadership Qualities Brittany emphasizes that a transformational leader must be agile. She feels that today’s world has never needed leaders more than ever. As a leader in 2020, a person had to adapt and be agile with the everchanging environment. A good leader makes decisions quickly and has hard conversations. The leader must be willing to make mistakes, learn from them and adjust quickly.

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Our mission is to make IT recruitment as painless and efficient as possible, and it is that attitude that will shine through in every interaction with a member of our team.

Brittany Fox

focusgts.com

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Growing Through Disruptions The biggest challenge that Brittany faced when she launched Focus GTS was that no one knew her in this space. As she didn’t come from a tech or staffing background, everything was brand new for her. Brittany’s background in real estate transitioned very well into staffing and recruiting as she was used to working with buyers/seller and now clients and candidates. That aspect was not hard for Brittany; she felt like a natural matchmaker. It took some time for her to ramp up about learning the lingo and how technology works.

“One thing I knew for sure was that it would be better to be a specialist versus trying to recruit each type of tech. I quickly focused on artificial intelligence and data science as my niche and grew my brand around being the go-to specialist when you need data science talent,” Brittany added.

Lessons That Inspire Success Brittany’s experience in real estate has shaped her career where she is today. She moved to NYC and launched a career.

People believe AI is going to take over the staffing industry, but Brittany is confident that no one can ever take the human touch out of the hiring process. “Your people are your biggest asset and you need the human aspect to understand if the candidate and client are right for each other. Today, automation will make our job easier and eliminate some unnecessary manual work. Companies that adapt to this will not only survive but thrive by making their business more effective,” she exclaimed.

Brittany first started showing economical rentals on craigslist ads and built up her network to move into the luxury sales side of the business. In her first year in real estate, she was the rookie of the year at the company. During her time in New York, Brittany learned that “No one will give you anything. The competition is fierce if you want anything, you must make it happen for yourself.” She found that setting up goals and making a clear plan of how someone will hit those goals has helped her achieve success.

Looking Ahead in the Future of Recruiting Brittany quotes that Peter Drucker says, “Business is two things, innovation and marketing”. According to her, Focus GTS’s fifth hire as a company was a marketing person. The company needed to get out of obscurity as quickly as possible and grow the business to the top 1% of all staffing companies.

Further, Brittany accentuates that Focus GTS must constantly be innovative to meet its clients’ needs and market to its audience. The industry as a whole is going more digital.

Sculpting Young Business Leaders Advising emerging businesswomen leaders, Brittany says that leaders have to believe the process is worth it. In this business, there are many ups and downs. Leaders must question themselves and examine their performance. “They should know why they got into this business in the first place and even during the low time, remember the reward is going to be worth it”, adds Brittany.

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A Pioneer in AI-Powered Conversational Customer Experiences

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Junel Oberholzer Chief Customer Officer Zoovu 36

oovu is the market leading data driven Customer Experience platform that delivers conversational experiences that are engaging, personalized, and contextual across all digital channels. Zoovu helps over 2,500 brands such as Microsoft, 3M and Bose create engaging data driven digital experiences that drive brand growth and loyalty.

Zoovu enables customers to easily engage through conversations simply by asking ‘how we can help’ and then turns to its extensive library of expert knowledge to find relevant helpful answers fast. Zoovu delivers these experiences through any channel the customer chooses, always keeping the context in mind and ensuring it leads to increased lifetime value.

What makes Zoovu unique is our ability to connect to major data sources and structure this data so it can be semantically enriched and turned into contextual conversations whether it be through click-based digital assistants, text-based chat-bots, messaging apps and intelligent site search, or visual-based product configurators.

A Self Built Leader Junel Oberholzer serves as Chief Customer Officer of Zoovu.

Born and raised in South Africa, after graduating high school, Junel decided (like many 18-year olds) to pack her bags and travel the world, determined to meet new people and experience new cultures. Junel can still remember looking out of the plane window while taxiing up the runway, vowing to always say ‘yes’ more than ‘no’ and to

take every opportunity presented to her. It’s a philosophy she still follows. After Junel’s travels, she settled in the UK, where her first job was in recruitment. With no experience, she quickly learned the ropes to be consistently awarded ‘top biller’ and got promoted.

Junel’s career in eCommerce began a few years later at an agency focused on the gifting industry, where she advised B2C brands on how to extract the most value from the emergence of digital commerce. It became clear that Junel had a knack for driving successful, multi-channel strategies, and the opportunity to build her first team presented itself in 2008. From then, Junel moved from the B2C world and made the jump into the SaaS industry, armed with everything she had learned to build and develop teams with the same customer-centric approach.

In 2010, Junel began remote studies for a degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology through UNISA (the University of South Africa), while simultaneously building out the Customer Success organization at Sentiment, where she worked closely with brands like eBay, supporting their adoption and success across social channels. Juggling academia with work was no easy feat, and despite a distinct lack of sleep, Junel found it incredibly rewarding. She was determined to learn more about how to build teams and processes that can scale while being a leader that champions diversity and change.

Junel joined Zoovu in 2018, where she now serves as the Chief Customer Officer, leading a global customer team of 40+ across 9 locations around the world. Her core focus is

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driving adoption of the company’s solution, customer retention, and ensuring their customers, who are some of the world’s biggest retailers and brands, gain maximum value out of the Zoovu platform.

Technology with AI capabilities and automation are becoming more accessible. Leaders of tomorrow will need to have that special blend of business acumen & technology to further the importance of customer success that bridges the gap and supports customers in adoption.

Junel Oberholzer

zoovu.com

Making Career Oriented Traits Beneath Gender Bias In Junel’s thirteen years of leadership, the most important revelation has been that true leadership does not have a gender-bias or a title-bias. Junel believes that leadership does not magically bestow people when they step into a particular role or reach a certain level in their career. She declares that leaders live and operate at every level of an organization, not just in the management team. They are the people who turn up day after day, challenging everything and taking nothing for granted. Most importantly, a true leader irrespective of the gender will always show the same level of respect and courtesy to every person in a room, not just those sitting at the top table.

Breaking the Routine of ‘Fitting In’ Very early in her career, Junel realized the importance of ‘standing out’ instead of ‘fitting in.’ It became abundantly clear to Junel that everything she does should be underpinned by passion, determination, and confidence. During her studies, Junel became acutely aware of how important it is to stand up for what is right, every single time, even when it means standing on your own. One of Junel’s trusted mantas is: ‘Never lower your standards or hide your passion to fit in with the crowd.’

The Importance of Being Exemplary at an Operational and Interpersonal Level Junel opines that in order to attain success, transformational leaders need to be exemplified at an operational and interpersonal level. From an operational angle, the best leaders show that they are ready to adapt, willing to change and don’t just accept feedback, but proactively ask for it. Junel insists that if something is not working, don’t dwell on it. Instead, recognize, adapt and move forward. When it comes to the interpersonal side, Junel wants her team to put their full self into their work, bringing their passions and values to life. She believes that leaders should (by definition) lead by example, in this regard. To deliver a best-in-class customer experience, Junel needs a diverse team of thinkers and doers, all of whom see the world differently.

Ultimately, their unique perspectives help Zoovu strive further, see things differently and deliver for every customer.

Turning Customer Feedbacks into Innovations Junel is a huge advocate for customer feedback and maintains

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that it is an imperative for Zoovu to continually provide the most value for its customers. Junel acts on this by maintaining a continuous dialogue with customers and partners. Junel’s job is to listen, question and take this meaningful feedback to her colleagues to translate this feedback into action.

Technology Creating an Engaging User Experience Junel declares that the world is seeing a wave of going back to distributed computing. Over the last decade, digital experiences were assembled in centralized, monolithic architectures, where people had one main solution on which they would build their platforms to increase capability. Now, the modern era is seeing more headless architectures where people can assemble different specialized applications or ‘microservices’ to create an engaging user experience that appears seamless to the customer. This has really changed the technology landscape as companies can move at the speed of their customers, she adds.

Foreseeing a Future with Personalized Customer Experience Junel mentions that the realm of customer experience is constantly evolving, and expectations are rising. She maintains that it is not enough for brands and retailers to simply understand the channels customers engage with; instead, they need to understand the ‘context’ of the conversation - what is the intent or resolution the customer is looking for - and how to engage and respond appropriately and immediately.. Junel affirms that there is no better way to understand context than through conversations and data.

Confidence & Conviction: Two Sides of Emerging Women Leaders Junel shares with emerging women leaders that there are two important factors to internalize: confidence and conviction.

She advises leaders to find the confidence within themselves to speak with conviction. Junel asks leaders to be their best selves and believe in their knowledge, experience, and intelligence.

She suggests they say ‘no’ when necessary while maintaining their integrity and respecting colleagues, clients, or anyone else.

Junel concludes that leaders should never underestimate the power of passion or let society dictate where their careers can take them. She adds that there is a common misconception that the bigger one’s career gets, the smaller their life turns. But when leaders are truly passionate about what they do, they can have it all.

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Empowering Yourself and Your Business for Success

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herapy Brands is a Birmingham, AL — based healthcare technology company that is addressing the rising demand for mental and behavioral health treatment by delivering costeffective mental and therapeutic tools and solutions for their customers. Serving the psychotherapy, substance use recovery, applied behavior analysis (ABA) and physical therapy markets, their goal is to be a ubiquitous technology partner for their customers by offering strategic capabilities to meet their clinical, administrative and billing needs.

Therapy Brands’ suite of integrated software solutions includes electronic health record (EHR), treatment planning, practice management, e-prescription, telehealth, card payment processing, patient engagement, reporting and insight data collection tools.

The company also offers revenue cycle management services that supports customer billing, claims and revenue collection needs. Their suite of solutions are designed to streamline business operations, so their customers can focus on caring for their patients from some of the most vulnerable populations.

Kimberly O’Loughlin CEO Therapy Brands

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An Accomplished Leader Kimberly O’Loughlin joined Therapy Brands as the CEO in February 2020. Prior to this, she served as President of Greenway Health, a healthcare IT company assisting

the ambulatory market, where she helped the company win the “KLAS Most Improved Ambulatory EHR” category award twice for Revenue Cycle Management.

Before Greenway, O’Loughlin ran two global businesses for Philips and prior to joining Philips, held senior leadership positions in the telecommunications, financial services and insurance industries.

She served on the board of Lightbeam Health Solutions, Inc. and was Chairman of the Board of an international joint venture at Vonage.

O’Loughlin holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University and a Master’s degree in applied psychology from Steven’s Institute of Technology. She served as class president at Princeton and is currently associated with the Alumni Schools Committee and also volunteers at Habitat for Humanity and the local YMCA program where she provides academic support for disadvantaged children. O’Loughlin currently resides in New Jersey with her husband and three children.

Thriving through Experiences O’Loughlin says that many experiences and people inspired her throughout her career journey, but the journey of self-awareness is key. She notes that as a leader, it is important to be aware of areas in which you

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Data and analytics can be leveraged across time and settings to drive better therapies and outcomes. Together, they play a large role in lowering costs, expanding access to care and improving the lives of patients in the mental, behavioral and physical therapy health markets.

Kimberly O’Loughlin

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therapybrands.com

can better yourself and to dedicate time for self-improvement.

O’Loughlin shares that as an introvert, she experienced challenges early on in her career when addressing a large impromptu audience. These teachable experiences inspired her to take action and set time aside to build her public speaking skills and overall communication acumen.

Additionally, O’Loughlin shares valuable insight into four key areas that lead to her success; be true to yourself, never stop learning, make most of the present and do your best in any endeavor. With these guiding principles in mind, she is focused on her goal of achieving the best solutions for Therapy Brands’ customers and investing resources to enable employees to thrive.

Innovative Tools for Effective Healthcare Solutions O’Loughlin notes that disruptive technologies are making a difference in the marketplace by utilizing data to improve

clinical efficacy and care pathways for efficient removal of administrative work. She adds that disruptive technologies can also be leveraged in businesses for efficient and effective operations, such as marketing campaigns, customer support and claims workflow efficiency. O’Loughlin states that leaders need to ensure teams have the required resources and expertise to reach these opportunities.

“Having a plan for the organizational capability that is needed in today’s digital age is crucial for success.”

Therapy Brands strives to deliver innovative solutions that exceed customers’ expectations by relentlessly focusing on their needs. O’Loughlin says that the product design and delivery teams frequently communicate with customers and prioritize their needs by ensuring their solutions are simple and streamlined. The company is geared for the future by focusing of the “art of the possible” by hoping to leverage emerging technology such as AI, ML, blockchain and

predictive analytics to enable efficiency, improve outcomes and increase cost-effective satisfaction.

market with increasing patient demand and is working to change the technological perspective for what is possible in the mental and behavioral and physical therapy health markets. “Our customers and their patients deserve to have mission-critical tools to run their businesses and serve the needs of the patients they serve.”

Transformational Leadership for the Future What does a transformational leadership look like?

“Transformational leaders are excellent at energizing a team around an inspirational vision,” says O’Loughlin. “Connecting the dots and integrating information and opportunity is paramount. Ultimately, these leaders have the conviction for demonstrating excitement about changing the way things are today to make a difference and improve something important tomorrow.”

O’Loughlin shares that Therapy Brands has an exciting road ahead. The company is continuing to serve a rapidly growing

Advice to Young Women Entrepreneurs O’Loughlin’s number one piece of advice for young women who aspire for career success is to set the bar high. She says, “ I believe that initiative is one of the most important factors in a person’s success. Great leaders find a way to overcome obstacles and seize opportunities!”

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AI Algorithms Proliferates Gender Bias during the Recruitment Process of Women

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and 10% of AI research staff at Facebook and Google respectively. This means that the root cause in the dearth of women in technology is the pre-requisite biases during the recruitment process.

Status of the Role of Women across the Industry Big tech organizations like Google and Amazon have in many instances tweeted about bolstering data science job profiles. They are already offering certification courses for the easy recruitment process in the big data and AI jobs. And while the AI roles are getting recognized globally, one domain that is still flawed is in the gender bias of the recruited roles. Despite many initiatives flagged off by the AI regulatory authorities, organizations still have a wider gender gap then what is being anticipated. The societal biases are so deeply ingrained, that the field of technology has less than 33% of women working at a higher position. A report by AI Now Institute points out that women comprise only 15%

Algorithmic Discrepancies Exacerbating Gender Biases A study report titled, “Ethical Implications of AI Bias as a Result of Workforce Gender Imbalance”, by the University of Melbourne further substantiates the role of AI-algorithms for proliferating gender-based bias across the industry. The researchers gave the real resume of candidates to the 40 recruiters of Unibank, for the role of a data analyst, finance officer and recruitment officer.

It is observed that the surveyed panelists ranked female resumes lower than that of males, in male-dominated as well as gender-balanced roles.

Leah Ruppanner, who is the co-author of the study and an associate professor at the University of Melbourne states that “Unfortunately, for data and finance roles, women’s resumés were ranked lower than men by our human panelists though they had the same qualifications and experience.”

With the help of data available, the researchers developed a suite of automated and semi-automated algorithms to rate the candidates’ suitability for each

he professional roles associated with artificial intelligence have been significantly gaining traction globally. LinkedIn has already nominated data scientist and data analyst roles amongst the most preferred in the coming decade.

Reports suggest that with changing dynamics of work, recruiters across all industry are currently inclined to employ professionals having technical proficiency about big data. Undoubtedly, big data is promptly becoming the game-changer across different sectors, and hence thriving the AI roles.

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of the jobs. The algorithm gets created for impartiality and neutrality without human intervention, as well as for enabling optimal efficiency and accuracy to sort out a large number of applications while profiting the company.

Such algorithms are created to ease out the redundant tasks as well, for identifying the excellent candidates. Instead, the study points out that the applied algorithms can encourage gender bias without taking into account the merit of the candidates.

Dr Marc Cheong, the report co-author and digital ethics researcher from the Centre for AI and Digital Ethics states that “Even when the names of the candidates were removed, AI assessed resumés based on historic hiring patterns where preferences leaned towards male candidates. For example, giving an advantage to candidates with years of continuous service would automatically disadvantage women who’ve taken time off work for caring responsibilities.”

He further adds, “Also, in the case of more advanced AIs that operate within a “black box” without transparency or human oversight, there is a danger that any amount of initial bias will be amplified.”

However, this is not the first time that gender biases due to discrepancies in algorithms have impacted the hiring process.

In 2018, Amazon’s secret AI recruiting tool AMZN.O displayed heavy bias against women.

Reasons for Algorithmic biases The AI algorithms are trained using a large volume of structured and unstructured data. Any discrepancy in this data can lead to the proliferation of biases in the existing system. For example, the study indicates that the limitation of datasets to train the AI-model for ranking and assessing the candidate can subsequently transform their benchmark based on the specific set of data. Similarly, if the data lacks the representation of a female candidate, the algorithm would indicate results based on male attributes.

Similarly, the pre-existing biases in the system can also be detrimental during the hiring process. This implies that the proxy attributes such as demographic locations, neighbourhood, and race can implant gender biases across the system, thus disrupting the corporate culture.

Conclusion Undoubtedly, every technology is a double-edged sword.

While we accept the pros of this evolving technology, it also becomes imperative to address its negative impacts across the industry. Since the talk about empowering women is getting constantly sweltered around, it’s high time that we give equal opportunities to women to display their skills. Without rectifying, the existing flaws and addressing the current barriers moving forward with artificial intelligence will be detrimental.

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Empowering Pension Providers to Find and Locate Pensions Holders Using Disruptive Technologies

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ypensionID is a digital platform that provides leading digital identification and verification technology, specifically for the pensions industry. Utilising innovative, proven mobile technology and biometrics, mypensionID enables members to communicate securely with their pension providers. It confirms and authenticates personal identity against official validated documents within minutes, both within the UK and internationally.

Pension providers widely use mypensionID to verify members for multiple verification needs. It also helps the public find and connect with all their pensions, without any need to transfer or consolidate. Pension schemes benefit from confirmed data updates at a fraction of cost of traditional tracing methods.

Lisa Lyon Founder mypensionID 48

An Innovative Leader Lisa Lyon is the innovative and inspired leader of mypensionID and the Managing Director of Target Professional Services for over 20 years. Her focussed business mindset has developed target professional services into a leading Pensions Tracing and Data Verification company. Lisa has grown the business from 2 to over 30 employees while balancing the motherhood of four talented children aged between 6 and 17 years.

She overcomes any hurdle in her way, setting clear objectives to succeed in business, simultaneously celebrating her children’s successes.

Lisa shares that the concept of mypensionID emerged aiming to create a secure and straightforward verification service that connects members across the globe, increase security, improve identification time, and member engagement. mypensionID was established in 2019 to provide a digital solution to pension schemes to verify a member’s

existence and contact details, both within the UK and globally. The development of the secure app-based authentication tool allows pension scheme members to securely confirm their details within minutes while using cutting-edge biometric technology, having taken the simplicity of a selfie and developed it into verification brilliance for an industry first.

Considering Mistakes as Opportunities Lisa feels that every day there is an opportunity to learn, some more than others, every mistake one makes, how one deals with those mistakes and how one innovates, makes innovations happen, and how one deals with the team makes that individual a leader. She cites one of her experiences with Target, that formerly owned by her mother.

A sizeable rental company approached Target to undertake all of the UK’s debt recoveries; Lisa’s mother as owner of Target at that time, declined the offer as she was not sure she could manage the workload.

Lisa offered to work for her and undertake the project herself. At the time, she had her own business converting businesses from manual accounts to computerized accounts. She spent time teaching herself how to build a database to set up an automated network, and employed a team to collect rental equipment and a small call centre team.

Lisa expresses that while she did not have the experience she saw it as an opportunity to learn. She successfully ran this until the rental business declined and her mother retired. Lisa then moved the company away from the debt sector as she saw an opportunity in the pensions sector to use the same skills, finding people for a positive reason rather than a negative reason. When she took over the company, there were only two employees. Lisa

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now employs over 30 staff. That was nearly 20 years ago, and Target is now the leading data verification company in the pension and investment sector, she states.

Technology is constantly changing. Embrace it to develop your edge. Listen carefully to customers to understand their problems and use technology for solutions.

Believe in your ability to affect change for the better.

Lisa Lyon

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mypensionid.co.uk

Taking the Lead in a Male-Dominated Industry Lisa started her journey as a female businesswoman in the financial sector nearly 20 years ago. “The financial sector was very different from how it is today, opines Lisa. “I would often walk into a board room to present, be ignored entirely, and the male - more junior person that accompanied me would be spoken to. It was a frustrating challenge, but I overcame it with my knowledge.”

She set out to be the expert in her field, understanding the industry’s requirements and challenges, and consistently drove change through innovation while simultaneously reducing costs. Lisa soon gained a positive reputation for her knowledge and how she worked with clients.

As her knowledge and reputation grew, the fact Lisa was a womna became less significant, but she had to work very hard to gain that respect. Having a positive attitude and seeing every discrimination as a challenge has made her the person she is today.

Lisa knows it is essential not to lose faith in yourself or allow others actions to harm you or disrupt your journey.

Motivating the Team Lisa believes that a transformational leader should be a good listener, both to the individual’s team and the target audience. Understanding the team, communicating effectively, motivating them, and developing and stretching them will gain individual respect and produce a great team. “You cannot be a leader without a team that believes in you,” she says.

A passionate leader can also be an inspirational leader, she expresses. A dynamic leader must be “faithful to her values in everything she does, consistent in her approach,” not afraid to make a difficult decision, always putting the company first.

Uprooting a Problem The most critical thing for Lisa is listening to clients, understanding their struggles and hurdles. Once one knows the problem, the person can start to innovate, develop products to solve problems. Listening allows an individual to innovate effectively. If innovation is the result of good listening, it will be a success. She suggests, however, to never stop innovating; success can always be improved upon.

She expresses that we live in a society where technology changes by the day. It is essential to embrace change and look

for opportunities to strengthen one’s latest innovation.

Embracing Technological Enhancements Technology is moving at a lightning pace right now, and as one innovation is adopted, another arrives to enhance the process or replace it entirely. At Target and mypensionID, the team looked to adopt technological enhancements to improve their own processes and the industry, continually challenging themselves to develop and adopt new methods. Many of the company’s innovations have influenced this industry and are now the benchmark to be judged by tracing and verification services business.

As a leader, Lisa has always challenged her team and expects them to challenge her on processes they have in place. It has also been essential to introduce senior team members from outside the industry as this brings a fresh perspective and different angle. Lisa continues to encourage her team to bring their experience to the table to help ensure mypensionID stays ahead of its competitors.

Staying Ahead of Developments To thrive, a company needs to look at adapting and moving with the times continually. That is what Lisa engendered at Target and led to the development of mypensionID and the market-leading services it offers. The whole team brings different skills and attributes and will look to move the company forward while never resting on its laurels and looking at what is around the corner, and aiming to stay ahead of developments, states Lisa.

The pensions industry with whom mypensionID works closely have not always been the quickest to adopt new technologies despite being pressured by the regulators, reveals Lisa. The global pandemic has thrown many new challenges to all companies. There is now a willingness and a need to take on board these technological advancements. mypensionID is poised to assist them in this journey, and it is also developing the company’s offering continuously for the broader pension, investments, and payments market in the coming years.

Having Faith in Self Lisa suggests, “Have belief in yourself. If you do not believe in yourself, how can you expect others to?” She adds to have a can-do attitude. Lisa firmly believes one can achieve anything if one puts their mind to it. Visualize the result, and the solutions will become clear. She says a woman will face challenges from both men and women along her journey. “Stay true to your values, do not allow negativity to affect your journey, treat it as an opportunity to solve a problem.”

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Transforming the Enterprise Industry with Market Research and Advisory Services On Artificial Intelligence

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ounded in 1964 and owned by IDG, International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global market intelligence provider of advisory services and organizes events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. Its analytics and insights-based solutions help IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based technology decisions and achieve their key business objectives.

Ritu Jyoti Program Vice President, Artificial Intelligence Research IDC 52

An Insightful Young Leader Ritu Jyoti is the Program Vice President, Artificial Intelligence within IDC’s worldwide software market research and advisory practice team. Her research is focused on global market trends for rapidly evolving AI, machine learning and intelligent automation innovations, and ecosystems. She also addresses the needs of the AI solution providing vendors and offers actionable guidance on how to crisply articulate their value proposition, differentiate and thrive in the digital era.

Ritu is a trusted advisor to some of the world’s largest technology firms and end-users. Prior to her current role, she was the Program Vice President of Systems Infrastructure Research Portfolio for IDC’s cloud IaaS, enterprise storage and server team. Ritu expanded IDC’s research on Infrastructure for AI & Analytics, launched competitive market data services for hybrid cloud, and delivered a compelling ‘Digital Transformation – IT Transformation’ framework for Data Infrastructure Services. She also provided ground-breaking research to drive business transformation, re-enforcing IDC’s position as the industry’s go-to thought leader.

Ritu completed her Bachelors in Electronics and Communication from Ranchi University, India. She then did her executive education in Corporate Strategy & Strategic Marketing from MIT Sloan School of

Management, USA. Before joining IDC, Ritu held various executive-level positions in product management, marketing, solutions, technology alliances, and consulting at Kaminario, EMC, IBM Global Services, and PwC Consulting. She also has over two decades of experience covering business applications (ERP, CRM), databases, big data analytics, and enterprise infrastructure services, driving big picture for corporate growth and strategic direction by identifying the potential business, market, and partnership opportunities. Ritu is a proven innovative thought leader who is adept at leveraging strong technical background to uncover and meet business/customer needs with onthe-ground solutions engineering. She was also the Chief Product Officer at Kaminario.

Moreover, Ritu is a speaker, presenter, and moderator at IDC’s industry and customer events, and provides analysis for multiple media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Wired, CIO Techie, and CIO. She is often quoted in leading business and technology publications.

Challenging the Male-dominated Industry Ritu shares that blending in a male-dominated industry was not easy in the initial phase. Being the only female in her batch when she was pursuing B.Tech prepared her for the future challenges of being a woman leader in tech. Many times, Ritu experienced a lack of inclusion based on ethnicity and gender.

Besides, it was not easy for her to get mentors who could provide guidance or social support. Ritu recollects about one substantial consulting engagement where she was the lead and where even some women doubted her leadership. “It took some time to win everyone’s confidence and succeed,” Ritu says.

Overcoming the Hurdles through Communication and Integrity Ritu believes that an ideal leader should be communicative, resilient, accountable, and highly

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By 2026, 20% of all AI solutions will be closer to AGI, leveraging neurosymbolic techniques that combine deep learning with symbolic methods to create robust humanlike decisionmaking.

Ritu Jyoti

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idc.com

ambitious.

Effective communication entails relentless, direct, and affirmed actions. She quotes C.S. Lewis, “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” Having a good conscience is essential, and integrity is the cornerstone of all leadership qualities. Although it is rarely seen personified, when it is, it is truly magical.

Ritu feels an effective leader needs to give credit when - it is due and take responsibility for blame when necessary. She has met only a few such leaders in 25 plus years of her career.

Ritu expresses that in today’s disruptive and unpredictable world, a leader’s true grit is not how the individual performs during good times but how the leader reacts to challenging situations. Start-up experience proved helpful for her to deal with such challenges.

As per Ritu, “Being ambitious can inspire loyalty, enthusiasm, commitment, and challenge people to outdo themselves.”

Surviving Competition with Solid Strategies The two areas Ritu gravitates to are observability and simplicity.

In her opinion, the results or benefits of using innovation should be visible to the adopter. Embracing it should be simple and as seamless as possible. She recalls being confronted with a nasty competitive situation while working for a large technology vendor as worldwide solutions product management and marketing lead. The company had an innovative offering but was challenged to appeal to the target audience. Recalling the old days, Ritu quotes her then CEO, “We do not need to build an engineering castle, but provide something that the customers can adopt seamlessly with tangible business benefits.”

Achieving Organizational Goals by Leveraging Disruptive technologies Ritu says disruptive technologies are impacting every aspect of business and lives. These innovations can directly influence both the production and the characteristics of a wide range of products and services with important implications for productivity, employment, and competition. But, as necessary as these effects are likely to be, AI also has the potential to change the innovation process itself, with consequences that may be equally profound and which may, over time, come to dominate the industry. She cites that developing novel technology can identify potential drug candidates using neural networks to predict candidate’s molecules bioactivity. The learning algorithms that are now being developed indicate that artificial intelligence may ultimately have a vast range of applications.

Today, we live in a world driven by commercial and technological disruption. Ritu believes that with a constant

change, leaders need to be both attuned to the impact of technology on their business and highly adaptable as a result.

Also, there has been a shift from the autocratic leadership style of the 20th century towards a more collaborative approach.

Today, work is no longer ordered from above but powered from within. It has opened the door to innovation and creativity, which is crucial for organizations to gain a competitive advantage. It has also brought teamwork, productivity, meaning, and purpose to every aspect of the work. There is also a greater emphasis on soft leadership skills. Leaders are more people-oriented than task-oriented.

“The impact of technology has also brought new challenges that have triggered a change in how we lead,” Ritu adds.

“The rise of remote working, for instance, has emphasized the importance of leaders trusting people to work towards organizational goals without constant monitoring or guidance.

This notion of empowering rather than smothering your employees is fundamental to 21st-century leadership.”

AI will Transform Traditional Market Research Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most disruptive innovation to date and has a significant and imminent impact on everything from company strategy, to business operations, to job functions. IDC is changing the way the world thinks about the effects of technology on business and society. Ritu envisions the incorporation of AI in market research data collection as data collection areas will become more seamless and automated, including analysis of open-ended text responses.

These capabilities will enhance researchers’ time-efficiency and create more value for clients, and break down the ‘why’ when purchasing behaviours.

Citing another example, Ritu mentions that sentiment analysis can better decipher positive or negative responses. Besides, market researchers will focus on insights that can carry over into clear and confident decision-making. Research has shown that customers value and appreciate it more when brand experiences are more curated or customized.

Mapping Out the Corporate Dynamics Ritu advises emerging leaders to find a mentor that inspires them with specific goals and tangible outcomes, investing time and wisdom judiciously. Taking charge of the initiatives, they can be confident and have a clear vision. She adds, learn to navigate the corporate dynamics, but “never give-up,” be relentless, instead.

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