The 10 Most Influential Women in Technology 2021

Editorial

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here is substantial evidence that the technology field is falling short of skillful people. CIO’s and other business leaders from various industries have been saying that recruitment issues are hampering the modernization of IT efforts. What’s the answer?

Recruiting more women into this field; women who are ready to put their skills and knowledge to use for the good. And this opinion is not just from a gender-diversity point of view, but also from the perspective that the lack of women in technology is leading to a decline in performance and profits for businesses.

Yes, the stress on female participation in society has increased with people calling it out for the sake of political and cultural arguments. Yet, a concrete foundation is needed to ensure more women are working in workplaces, especially in the line of technology. According to Morgan Stanley, gender diversity is crucial for industries that focus on employee engagement and satisfaction through the quality of products or services. This statement also applies to technology, finance, retail, etc.

What Do Women Have To Do With Better Performance? Doesn’t this question seem silly to ask? But let’s talk about this. Researchers use the term “general collective intelligence” while talking about a group’s ability to perform well across a variety of tasks. This concept is similar to general intelligence while referring to individuals. Studies found out that a team’s cognitive intelligence increased with the number of women in that team. A simple explanation, as a part of that study, was that the presence of women improved the collective social sensitivity, leading to better collective intelligence.

Why aren’t there enough women in the STEM fields, despite the positive results? Some of these reasons are lack of encouragement, lack of role models, negative peer pressure, and sexual harassment.

Studies suggest that it is not an ability issue.

Women from under-represented groups face unjust twice as much - in some places girls struggle for basic access to education and in workplaces, because of both gender and race.

To manage the deficit, businesses can take active measures to attract more women in technology roles and leadership positions. Recruitment and management policies can involve unfairness and bias that is unintentional. When left unchecked, they can create differences for employees who deserve fair treatment. Companies should check their job postings for gendered speech and anything that might put out the wrong message.

Having more women involved in the hiring process can remove bias that goes unlooked by men. Another reason is the fact that women’s representation will attract more women to the field. Impractical work arrangements impacts women, especially childcare. As the tech industry is becoming more open to non-traditional work practices, anyway that can provide an easy work-life balance will help attract women in the technology field.

The fourth industrial revolution is changing the way we work and perceive life. Due to its rapid pace, as a society, we cannot afford to have gender inequalities in our workplaces. The answer is written in bold and is being said loud and clear, give women equal opportunities, so they become role models for young girls, encourage them, and show them that the technology industry is changing the world for good. Women are critical for leveraging the digital revolution which will benefit our global society.

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APOORVA KOMARRAJU

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Contents

08 COVER STORY

LYNNE PEYTON

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20

ANANYA

DR. EVA MARIE MULLER-STULER

Adaptive US Inc

IBM

Obsessing Over

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32

Patriarchy?”, Asks AI!

JAMI GOODWIN MEDINA

JOANNE MCEACHEN

Empirical Data Strategies

The Learner First

46

50

26 Implying Artificial Intelligence in Business to Evolve from Minimum to Million

44 “Aren’t We Done

38 MARIA JONES

MARY T BUNZEL

YONG HUA LIN

Nerdy Industry

University Of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

V-Origin Technology

COVER STORY

The CORE Elements of Leadership An international keynote speaker, respected author, organizational consultant, and a personal coach to senior managers, here’s a spotlight on Lynne Peyton.

Lynne Peyton Leadership and Change Management Consultant 8

With a history of achieving results for senior managers and their organizations, she is an independent consultant for the health and social care sector. She has specific expertise in risk assessment at both organizational and practice levels and in identifying the strategies and actions needed for safe practice. We had a talk with her about her idea of leadership and what practices helped her to have a successful career.

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Success is really all about an attitude of mind and it is about the meaning we give to things and the quality of the questions we ask ourselves. It is about controlling our mind rather than letting the little voice inside our heads wear us down. It’s a combination of what we focus on and the language we use both to ourselves and others.

About Her Consultancy Following years as a senior manager in the sector, Lynne established her consultancy in 2001 and since then she has been involved in a range of exciting projects assisting organizations in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to promote high-quality services. Lynne Peyton Consultancy

Mission & Vision Lynne Peyton is a master at solving organizational challenges. With her consultancy, she aims to help companies to achieve outstanding results through strengthening leadership at all levels and building

strong coherent teams with a common purpose. She helps companies identify and address the issues that underpin business challenges so that they can refocus on successful outcomes.

Services That Create Value People who reach out to Lynne Peyton’s consultancy break free from limiting beliefs that hold the company back, challenge the old stories and habits, and receive support in achieving their results, professionally and

Lynne Peyton

personally. “My consultancy is a one-stop-shop for advice and guidance on leadership and change management” Her website has a library of articles and podcasts on topical leadership issues.

Challenges So Far

lynnepeyton.com

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offers team building and leadership development, SEO coaching and mentoring, audits and reviews, as well as bespoke training to take businesses to a new high. Lynne specializes in developing top teams and executive coaching, increasing communication, efficiency, and reducing overall business frustrations.

Many times, managers become stuck because they are so overwhelmed by day to day tasks and the challenges can seem insurmountable. By asking strengths-based questions Lynne helps them to get to the core of their issues and develop a workable

plan of action. Lynne is a master practitioner in Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and neuroscience and draws on these and other skills in one-to-one and group coaching, to help people achieve extraordinary results in all areas of their personal and business life.

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Notable Client Recognition Lynne’s clientele is a vast list of organizations that aim to make a difference, ranging from Abu Dhabi Police to Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. “Lynne has been an unwavering source of support and inspiration as I have expanded my work beyond Australia.

Her knowledge of what helps and what hinders, drawn from vast experience and couples with a direct and disarming approach to delivering constructive feedback has made an indelible mark on my growth as a person and a professional. I am always learning and being inspired to be a better version of myself when I engage with Lynne”, said Colby Pearce, Principal Clinical Psychologist at Secure Start.

“Abu Dhabi Police is pleased to thank you for all your efforts and distinguished participation in its 2nd Crime Prevention Conference 2014. Your paper on ‘Investing in Motherhood and EarlyChildhood’ was of great value to those who attended.” - His Excellency Major General Mohammed Bin AlawadiAlminhali, General Director of Policing Operations.

Lynne’s Mantra Of Leadership Lynne’s clientele includes organizations that aim to make a difference, including governmental, not for profit and private sector companies.

“Lynne has been an unwavering source of support and inspiration as I have expanded my work beyond Australia. Her knowledge of what helps and what hinders, drawn from vast experience and coupled with a direct and disarming approach to delivering constructive feedback has made an indelible mark on my growth as a person and a professional. I am always learning and being inspired to be a better version of myself when I engage with Lynne”, said Colby Pearce, Principal Clinical Psychologist at Secure Start, Australia. Abu Dhabi Police is pleased to thank you for all your efforts and distinguished participation in its 2nd Crime Prevention Conference

Her Advice To Budding Leaders While she understands the intensity of work in today’s modern world, Lynne stresses the need for self-care.

“It is important for leaders to have self-care strategies so they can look out for their teams and be a role model of good practice, especially through the

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ongoing uncertainty of managing services through the pandemic”, says Lynne. Having self-care strategies will help leaders consistently show up with the physical and emotional strength to support others.

Lynne Peyton

Ananya

Founder Lynne Peyton Consultancy

Director and Co-founder, Adaptive US Inc

After working as a senior manager in the sector for many years, Lynne Peyton established her consultancy called ‘Lynne Peyton Consultancy’ in 2001. Since then, she has been involved in a range of exciting projects assisting organizations in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to promote high-quality services. Lynne specializes in developing top teams and executive coaching, increasing communication, efficiency, and reducing overall business frustrations.

Ananya is the Director and Co-founder at Adaptive US Inc. An engineer by education and a marketer by role, she is called a self-learned marketer for her role in developing the company.

Ananya founded Adaptive US, an Ed-Tech firm focused on professional education in 2017. She believes in creating opportunities and growth for everyone, including all the members at Adaptive, and its customers.

lynnepeyton.com

adaptiveus.com

Dr. EvaMarie Muller-Stuler Chief Data Scientist and AI & Advanced Analytics Practice Leader for Middle East and Africa IBM

Helen Pospelova Senior Vice President ABBYY

Jami Goodwin Medina

Jeanniey Walden

CEO Empirical Data Strategies

Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer DailyPay

Jami Goodwin Medina is the CEO of Empirical Data. Prior to starting Empirical, she has held numerous leadership roles within financial and healthcare institutions in strategy and business development. Jami has been an early adopter of data visualization and specialized in using market data within healthcare CRMs to help understand patient and provider decisions and patterns.

Jeanniey Walden is the Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer (CIMO) of DailyPay. Before joining the company, Jeanniey led marketing teams at multiple Fortune 1000 companies and start-ups and launched a couple of her own businesses. She finds joy in growing start-ups and helping individuals reach their highest potential. Jeanniey has a long history of working in the FinTech industry.

As the Chief Data Scientist and AI & Advanced Analytics practice leader for Middle East and Africa at IBM, Dr. EvaMarie Muller-Stuler is taking part in creating transformative solutions for clients and observes the innovations and shapes industries across the globe. She has implemented Centres of Excellence, created value-based AI delivery in Oil and Gas, the Financial sector and Governments, and architected realworld-value using data science for tangible outputs.

Helen Pospelova is the Senior Vice President of ABBYY Emerging Markets. She believes that her aptitude for building strong cross-cultural connections, finding a unique approach to people from different countries and developing effective networks across borders, shaped her professional ability to form successful international partnerships and alliances. Along with these qualities, Helen also considers her agility to recognize untapped opportunities is a key factor that determined her future career path in the promising IT sector.

ibm.com/in-en

abbyy.com

empiricaldata.org

dailypay.com

Joanne McEachen

Maria Jones

Mary T Bunzel

Yong Hua Lin

CEO and Founder The Learner First

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Nerdy Industry

Executive Director, Connected Systems Institute University Of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Founder and CEO V-Origin Technology

Joanne McEachen is the CEO/ Founder of The Learner First who has experience as a teacher, principal, and countrywide school-system leader, and consulting internationally with over ten countries worldwide.

As a best-selling author, a social entrepreneur, and a leading voice in the global education community, she brings years of whole-system leadership experience in all levels of education to offer insights and strategies that support communities to discover their strengths.

As the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Nerdy Industry, Maria Jones manages the company’s operations and initial consultation for each client. She is engaged in meeting Nerdy Industry’s potential clients and builds a trusted relationship with the company’s leadership team. Prior to starting Nerdy Industry, Maria had more than 20 years of success spanning start-ups, healthcare, financial services, real estate, and SaaS IT companies.

thelearnerfirst.com

nerdyindustry.com

Mary T Bunzel spent most of her career working in the manufacturing sector with a technological perspective.

Intel recognized Mary’s knack for technology and asked her to bring her knowledge to work there. She also had her hands on disruptive technologies while working as General Manager of the Manufacturing Industry Solutions Group. All her experience lead Mary to become the Executive Director of Connected Systems Institute (CSI), University Of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

uwm.edu/csi

Yong Hua Lin is the Founder and CEO of V-Origin Technology. She began the company two years ago in 2019 after working at IBM for 16 years. Yong was the Director of IBM Research, China, and was later appointed as IBM Distinguished Engineer to lead global AI system innovation. To drive the diversity in the field of science and technology, Yong founded IEEE Women in Engineering Beijing affinity group.

www.linkedin.com/company/ e-vision-ai/about/

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Delivering Online Professional Education and Skill-based Courses

By Industry Experts

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Ananya Director and Co-founder Adaptive US Inc

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ducation is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” – Nelson Mandela.

Ananya, Director and Co-founder at Adaptive US Inc. has always believed in empowering professionals to excel by leveraging their potential in the best possible mAnanyaer and pushing themselves beyond their comfort zones. With this idea of empowering professionals to achieve more, the team established the Adaptive US, an Ed-Tech firm focused on professional education, in the year 2017. The company offers specialized certification and skill-based courses, which are delivered by top leaders and industry experts.

This is supported by exhaustive and high-quality learning resources to support the learning journey for professionals. The Adaptive US has catered to all kinds of learners and keeping their needs in mind (the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and the reading/writing learners).

An Influential Leader Ananya is an engineer by education and a marketer by role. She comes from a non-business family with no business background, formal education, nor sales and marketing experience.

So, one can call her a self-learned marketer.

Having said that, she is always up for learning and a work in progress. AnanyaShe believes in creating opportunities and growth for everyone, including all the members at Adaptive, and its customers.

The early stages of her entrepreneurship taught her that Sales and Marketing being a core function, must carry the founders’ passion, energy, and vision and be nurtured and grown by one of them. Building customer trust is the company’s core value and the pillar of its success. SheAnanya has taken utmost care to keep customers at its core focus in each touchpoint with them.

Customer experience is beneficial to monitor metrics for organizations. This has made Adaptive a global leader in its domain.

In short, some of the achievements that the company has achieved in its three years of operation are» Trusted by professionals from 80+ countries to upskill and get certified. » Trusted by industry experts and trainers from 3 continents. » Adaptive has a class run guarantee and has zero cancellation of classes in the last 3 years of operation. They even had classes for one

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student since it was a matter of trust and commitment to the customer who trusted the company. » A tremendous success in repeat business and referenceable customers. » Believe in absolute fair and open policies for customers, and all terms are openly published on the website. » No hidden or differential pricing or policy; no customer should feel discriminated.

Continuous Learning from Real-Life Experiences and Peers Ananya’s first stint as an entrepreneur taught her many things that helped her to a large extent to not to repeat those mistakes again.

Some of the key learnings from them are: 1. Having a variety of different service offerings may look tempting in terms of revenue. But, it is not true, since it doesn’t allow one to be completely focused on any one of them.

2. Not maintaining a healthy revenue and cost structure.

3. Her first decision in the second tenure was a deep focus and going global.

4. Having a trust-based work culture – Adaptive allows a lot of flexibility and is a remote working team. Being so allowed the company to expand its workforce to a global team and support customers globally with ease. . The high-level of trust in employees made the organization remarkably cohesive, entrepreneurial and everyone took ownership of their workpieces. This released a lot of bandwidth from the leadership team and allowed time to focus on strategy and growth plans. . The company doesn’t track employee hours; all the colleagues know their responsibilities and their own piece of work. . Everyone is allowed to take leaves whenever they need (to attend to family and other needs). That has enhanced productivity a lot and instilled a tremendous amount of trust in the leadership. Everyone in the team now works towards healthy growth since they feel being part of a winning team.

5. Exploring the untapped potential of women - Women form 2 thirds of the team; many of them had a long career break or had no work experience. Adaptive believed and trained them, and they are now some of the best performers in the team. They are highly committed due to the trust and growth they see with the team.

Make your customers’ winners and be a winner.

Ananya

adaptiveus.com

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Overcoming the Challenges The primary challenges were brand building, getting Adaptive known in the global market, advertising costs, since the company is entirely bootstrapped.

But looking back, Ananya felt these challenges pushed the team to try its best, beyond their limits, and to get the best out of each dollar they spent.

Funds were limited, hence spending on advertising or hiring experts from the global market was always a challenge. The company had to be extra careful in all its marketing expenses, but that made it test what is working and what is not in a very prudent manner. Adaptive had to tackle the costs and revenue one month at a time.

But focusing solely on making the company a trusted brand, soon things started turning around. Adaptive started growing more than double in the first two years and is still maintaining a healthy growth rate.

Factors Forming Leaders of Tomorrow Ananya believes: 1. 3Ps – Patience, Perseverance, and Positivity - One needs to have enormous positivity and perseverance to keep things moving, even during gloomy times. The leader is the organization’s torchbearer and maintains the team’s emotions and spirits high during tough times.

2. Take calculated risks – If in doubt about the outcomes, test in a small way, observe and implement accordingly.

3. Let your data drive the decisions – Data is the management’s eyes and ears, and analytics is the brain.

4. Ability to inspire others to achieve a shared objective/goal 5. Make your customers’ winners and be a champion.

If you align your goals to the customers’ objectives, then the entire relationship changes to partnership instead of service provider and customer.

Understand your customers’ needs, alleviate their pain, assist/ support them in winning their battles and make them heroes, and they will make you a hero.

Innovation of Products/Solutions to Attract the Target Audience According to Ananya, innovation of products/solutions to gain customer attraction can be achieved by: Laser focus on customers Like Ananya said before, CUSTOMERS’ successes are the sole focus of Adaptive; and the company always puts itself into the customer’s shoes to bring new changes. The company has paid a lot of attention to what its customers say, their

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concerns, and how it can alleviate their pain.

Remove risk Adaptive guarantees its students’ success, thus leading to absolute peace of mind for the customers. It aims at reinforcing customer trust by removing the risks in the process.

Disruptive Technologies Impacting Today’s Innovation Ananya feels that automation has played a significant role in removing manual and predictable tasks, thereby elevating humans to do higher capability tasks like new idea generation, innovation, strategic involvement, etc.

The company has implemented automation in almost all those areas that can be predicted and have removed human intervention, thereby improving the team’s tasks in a big way.

The learning and innovation culture has been a very core way of its working from the beginning.

“Unless you automate and improve processes, people will not grow in the system,” says Ananya.

She also mentioned that technology adoption is crucial for an organization to keep up with the market needs and stay ahead of the game.

The Future Ahead “I see a very bright future for the online education segment

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and the company,” says Ananya.

Online learning has opened new avenues for learners since they can now learn anything from anyone sitting anywhere using technology. They can choose to learn from the best in the industry, unlike earlier days of confining themselves to the local talent. This has opened enormous growth potential for learning organizations as well. Adaptive is poised to grow to a Billion dollar company by 2025.

Radiating Key Advice to Emerging Women Leaders On advice to emerging leaders, Ananya asks them to: » Follow your passion. » Live like there is no tomorrow. » Experiment with new things, be ready to fail, learn, try again until you succeed. » Do not get addicted to a lifestyle that will make you stay stuck to a job for the love of stability. » We all win or lose in our minds. Believe in yourself, and you can achieve anything you aspire for. » An idea becomes a reality with execution and excellence in execution is the key to success for any business. » Build a strong team and a culture of trust and integrity in the organization.

Driving Digital Transformation Across Enterprise through Disruptive Innovation

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Dr. Eva-Marie Muller-Stuler Chief Data Scientist and AI and Advanced Analytics practice leader IBM GBS 20

BM GBS is the leading global provider of digital transformative capabilities that completely shape how the technical journeys of companies, organizations and governments can reach new levels. From infrastructure and DevOps to Ethical AI and conversational NLP, IBM GBS specifically are world leaders in the implementation and delivery of these services.

An Influential Leader As the Chief Data Scientist and AI & Advanced Analytics practice leader for Middle East and Africa, Dr. Eva Marie Muller-Stuler has had the opportunity to spearhead some of the most transformative solutions for their clients and observe these innovations change and shape industries across the globe. She has implemented Centres of Excellence, created value-based AI delivery in Oil and Gas, the Financial sector and Governments, and architected real-world-value using data science for tangible outputs.

As a capacity builder within GBS, Dr Eva has taught at universities, held seminars and conferences and worked with women-in-tech organizations across the globe. She is the SME for Data Science, a member of the prestigious IBM Academy of

Technology and part of a larger community of specialists working to enhance AI for good across all industry sectors.

Continuous Learning from Real-Life Experiences and Peers Having had to work harder than others to achieve in large corporate environments and also to multitask at break-neck speeds to excel in smaller organizations, Dr. Eva has learned that success is not the goal; it is simply a stepping stone to the next challenge and from that to the next opportunity. In any role, there are always more challenges, more expectations, and more possibilities of failure, but as a woman in technology, she has always felt that there are always more eyes watching. However, Dr. Eva found that by focusing on her core strength, her integrity, and by constantly expanding her skills and knowledge, it is possible to break ceilings and build communities.

Dr. Eva has never taken anyone’s support for granted. Instead, she has focused on building a team and always worked to enhance its collective success.

By standing up for herself and her team, she

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has learned to be respectful of everyone’s opinions in every situation. Dr. Eva mentions, “Not all battles are necessary, but when it challenges my principles, then I will fight to ensure that my voice is heard.”

“Encourage and build the skills and capabilities of other women and men in your team,” she says. Dr. Eva knows that this ethos will always serve to point everyone towards a common goal. But, importantly, it puts her into a position with her team to learn from their journey together.

Lastly, she suggests being kind whenever possible, accepting that being direct is often the kindest approach.

We have to stop wasting time and resources on POCs. Instead, we need to build fully deployable, ethical and explainable AI solutions that are scalable and focus on impact.

Dedication: Road to Success Dr. Eva reveals the challenges she faced during the initial phase of her journey: » Being taken seriously as a technical leader as a woman in a male-dominated field. » Being at the forefront of ideas and technologies and having to promote these for nearly a decade before they became widely recognized.

Even balancing Ph.D. studies and working in a challenging full-time role in financial restructuring was deeply demanding.

Dr. Eva-Marie Muller-Stuler

ibm.com/in-en

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Factors forming Leaders of Tomorrow Dr. Eva believes that leaders should have some intrinsic qualities like: » Integrity – Its essential to ensure that the ethical nature of your people isn’t being compromised. » Honesty – Your team will respond to being treated respectfully and this means being honest with them about what is happening and why it’s happening. You find more support in honesty than in subterfuge. » Knowledge – If you know more about your business, your people, your services and your products than anyone else in the room, you will always come out with a successful result.

Key to Achievements Dr. Eva works to understand the client’s business value and identify what the real purpose of their services will be for them. She maintains the that the focus of all innovations is to deliver real-world value. This leads to ethical, contextual and successful AI implementations.

Innovation and Role of a Leader Today According to Dr. Eva, being at the forefront of this technical revolution; delivering on the promise of AI, has been a slow journey. However, it is wonderful to see how it has matured from the traditional “disruptive” mentality to more mainstream implementations. This means that the adoption of these technologies is being used in places that change the world for the better. For example, each of the UN sustainability goals has roots in these technologies and they are now so fundamentally transformative that they achieve unsurpassed potential in their adoption.

Path Leading to the Future Dr. Eva affirms that focusing efforts has always proved to be a winning strategy. By identifying and sharpening the skills, solutions and products, companies can foster the continuous adoption and innovation of the AI sector into the future.

Diversity and the heightened understanding of technology will prove to be a winning recipe for IBM GBS as well as the wider industry in the next decade.

Radiating Key Advice to Emerging Women Leaders Dr. Eva asks them to: » Build your network » Don’t be afraid of failure, but make sure that you learn from the experience » It is vital to support each other across all industries » There has never been a more important time to lead, than now

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Implying Artificial Intelligence in Business to Evolve from Minimum to Million

A

rtificial intelligence, the concept that existed only in Hollywood fantasy a couple of decades back is now a fast-evolving reality. At its core, AI seeks to transform information into intelligent, automated action.

Among the many industries that are adopting artificial intelligence into their routine, business stands out by almost exponentially relying on the technology. With the increasingly vast amount of data available today and the constantly evolving preferences and complexity of customers, businesses can no longer believe in traditional business models to drive growth. These radical pain points have opened up the realm of AI adoption to accelerate business growth through actionable insights generated from customer data.

The term ‘artificial intelligence’ was initially coined by John McCarty, but Alan Turning holds the gratitude for popularising it. In the early days when artificial intelligence was still at its first phase of development, people believed that it is a machine that will stimulate intelligence and human logic. As years passed, the technology grew over human logic and is performing intellectual tasks. Artificial intelligence in today’s world is at the cutting-edge of the digital revolution. The technology is marching into the global business ecosystem across all its touchpoints. While applied for business purposes, AI reduces operating costs, increases revenue, and optimizes the customer experience. As technology evolves, AI tools are getting more sophisticated and advanced, changing the entire way of working. Besides implying AI in business, business executives are looking for ways to embrace the technology in the company’s culture. That will further stabilize its presence in the business operations. Here are some of the smart ways that businesses can imply AI into their working system.

AI for customer service, ‘Hi, I’m the AI bot’ Customer churn is a big challenge that businesses combat on daily basis. Creating loyal customers is the baseline of building a proper business cycle, but losing them over service issues is the worst nightmare. Henceforth, companies

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are hunting down bot services to give their customers the satisfaction and pride of being heard. Bot unravels the facility to make customers engage in basic conversations with the company without human presence.

Providing the customized joy Customer preferences vary on many grounds such as geographical area, season, mood, etc. The Covid-19 pandemic has become one of the major contributors to behavioral changes. Therefore, smart leaders are using AI as part of a customer journey orchestration strategy to improve customer lifetime value. AI drives individualization at scale and in real-time. It gives brands the ability to identify customers’ needs and personalize the offering.

Automation takes over monotonous tasks One of the most advanced and appealing applications of artificial intelligence is leveraging automation to contemplate time-consuming business processes. Besides minimizing employees’ labor, automation also boosts their productivity and satisfaction. With automation taking over repetitive and monotonous tasks, employees can focus on more meaningful and fulfilling tasks. Numerous studies have also unraveled the fact that happier employees perform better and automation is acting as a core substance for it.

Analytics at the core of business insight While some applications of AI are taking over basic tasks in business, advanced analytics outperforms the routine and stands out with its features. Advanced analytics uses machine learning algorithms to detect patterns in vast volumes of data, interpret their meaning, and make decisions just like humans. In addition, cognitive analytics espoused with the implementation of chatbots or search assistants can understand queries and interact with humans in natural language.

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Delivering CuttingEdge Data Engineering Services for Marketing and Sales Teams

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mpirical Data Strategies provides data engineering services for marketing and sales teams. The company’s expertise is in maximizing the power of customer data to impact its client’s businesses. Its focus is to specialize in performing advanced machine learning with market channel data.

Jami Goodwin Medina CEO Empirical Data 28

An Experienced Leader Prior to starting Empirical, Jami Goodwin Medina, CEO of Empirical Data, has held numerous leadership roles within financial and healthcare institutions in strategy and business development. She has been an early adopter of data visualization and specialized in using market data within healthcare CRMs to help understand patient and provider decisions and patterns. Jami holds a master’s degree from the University Of Kansas School Of Medicine and from Washington University in St. Louis’s McKelvey School of Engineering. In addition to her role with Empirical, Jami serves as the Director of Data and Analytics for Lewis Communications.

Continuous Learning from Real-Life Experiences and Peers Starting her career in financial services, Jami worked mostly in male-dominated spaces.

Jami notes that it has been incredibly refreshing for her to see the tech community embrace diversity-in gender, in thought, in education and experience. While the industry as a whole still has work to do, Jami is glad to see the emphasis on accepting talent based on skills has been a great equalizer and has contributed to its rapid growth as a company. Jami also says that having worked directly in the healthcare industry and financial services certainly allowed her to bring an understanding of the pressures that its clients face every day to produce an ROI for their marketing investments.

Overcoming the Challenges Early in Jami’s career, women were still questioned for their dedication to work in technical roles.

There was a misguided belief that hard work meant 18 hour a day, head down, in front of a laptop. While Jami had her share of those days, she

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I am very excited when I think about the future of data science and engineering and the opportunities that exist for remote talent all over the globe to engage with a workforce hungry for their skills.

learned that her team works best when they can balance the demands of their life with that of the job.

Factors Forming Leaders of Tomorrow In order to succeed in data science and engineering, Jami thinks it is critical to be dedicated to constantly learning. She saves time every day for coding and building skills to stay relevant, to help provide the best guidance and feedback to her team and to the clients the company serves. Jami concentrates to stay on top of new technological innovations.

Jami Goodwin Medina

empiricaldata.org

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Innovative Products/Solutions to Attract the Target Audience Jami believes that the company is constantly listening to its customers and demonstrating to them the value that comes from new technologies and techniques. Curiosity is a core value at Empirical, and by staying dedicated to its clients and their needs, along with constantly learning new and efficient techniques from different industries and applying them to marketing and customer data, the company is able to set its clients up for success and drive their business forward.

Disruptive Technologies Impacting Today’s Innovation According to Jami, many of the programming languages, tools and techniques that she uses every day are very different from whatever she learned in school. Empirical embraced the power of artificial intelligence and big data modelling for

many of its clients, as it is now able to understand the power of individual human behaviour and model on a large scale to deliver precise outcomes on who to reach and why. Thus, the company continues to innovate with the industry and find new ways to bring the power of data to every step of the marketing journey.

The Future Ahead While the past year has been incredibly challenging around the globe, one key change that Empirical is observing is that more companies are embracing the power of remote work and remote partnerships. This has allowed the company’s team to continue to innovate and grow, as partners are willing to work more with talented companies outside of major coastal cities. Jami is very excited when she thinks about the future of data science and engineering and the opportunities that exist for remote talent all over the globe to engage with a workforce hungry for their skills.

Radiating Key Advice to Emerging Women Leaders Jami advises future women leaders to not give up and to take time to build the skill set and portfolio. She believes those who are passionate about data and curious to help their clients find answers and solve complex problems, will always have a place in this industry.

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Empowering Education Industry to Adapt and Grow Through Digital Transformation

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Joanne McEachen Founder & CEO The Learner First (USA/Australia/New Zealand) 32

he Learner First (TLF) is an international education consulting agency that partners with governments, states, school districts, communities, and all the way through to individual schools. It aims to support every individual to learn who they are, how they fit into the world, and how they can contribute their gifts to humanity.

The agency provides tools, activities, and strategies that help teachers measure and assess academic and social-emotional learning. The key objective behind these initiatives is to help students learn about themselves, form meaningful connections, better access the curriculum, and, through the process of learning, contribute to the world in life-changing ways. The Learner First utilizes a mixed-method, stakeholder-centered approach to whole system change and works to develop and leverage a culturally grounded understanding of the systemic factors required for success. It uses digital mixed methods of data designed to integrate evaluative tools to assess, track, and measure the development of life’s essential outcomes i.e., self-understanding, connection, knowledge, and competency. These

outcomes help students contribute to the world, bringing purpose, engagement, motivation, and meaning. TLF believes that every child deserves an equitable opportunity to learn to contribute in their way to the world. It will make their own lives, and others’ lives, better—and nothing could ever be better than that.

A Versatile and Dynamic Leader Joanne McEachen is the CEO/Founder of The Learner First (USA/Australia/New Zealand), an Edmund Hillary Fellow (EHF), a Fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar (Austria), on the Executive Committee for Karanga: The Global Alliance for Social-Emotional Learning and Life Skills (Global), a Board Member for Partners for Youth Empowerment (Global) and a co-founder of New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (Global).

A best-selling author, a social entrepreneur, and a leading voice in the global education community, Joanne brings years of whole-system leadership experience, working with and within all levels of education to offer insights and strategies that support communities to discover their strengths

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and bring them to the surface. The perspective she works from is that people and communities, not the experts, hold the answers.

Her experience as a teacher, principal, and countrywide school-system leader, and consulting internationally with over ten countries worldwide, has enabled Joanne to focus on what matters, on humanity’s development of well-being and the learning outcomes that lead to meaning, fulfillment, and lifelong success. She has co-authored multiple books which can be found in schools and homes around the world.

Joanne’s insights are illuminated by continued, hands-on experience partnering with diverse groups of learners around the world.

Learning is about knowing who you are, how you fit into the world, and how you can contribute your unique gift to humanity, and it is through the use of digital tools that we can amplify these gifts to ensure the healthy survival of humanity and our planet.

Diffusing Challenges from Real-Life Experiences According to Joanne, the hardest lesson she had to learn was to stand up to males who would take credit for her work and represent it as their own. She also had to put forth her best efforts to break through the stereotypical barriers and set an example that even indigenous women can be leaders in their respective fields of work!

Joanne cites that it was her confidence that helped her believe in herself, that she could change the world, and that she was capable of supporting others to do the same. She states that while it isn’t always easy to find solutions to the struggles and challenges we face every day, one thing is certain—everything can be solved when we are on the lookout for one another.

She says, “If we pool our thinking, we can discover solutions to current problems together.”

Recognizing Unmatched Leadership Attributes Joanne posits that there are three must-have qualities of every transformational leader. These are: An individual must be true to herself and always speak her truth—not the truth which she might think other people want to hear. » Bring all voices to the table and respond to all voices at the table, especially those who are being served in the industry. » Recognize that everyone is an integral part of the system and that change can only be brought about by working together. The responsibility lies within.

Joanne McEachen

thelearnerfirst.com

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schools all over the world, teachers and students are asking for help. Though it is well-known that the current school system is outdated, Joanne is confident that it is possible to bring transformation by good communal support.

Technology as Enabler of Innovation In education, the shifts in the future of work created by emerging technologies call for shifts in the skills and content schools deliver. Workforce automation coupled with new fields and positions afforded by these technologies mean a much different landscape for graduates today than there was even a couple of decades before. Joanne reveals, “Today, education and school leaders are charged with preparing students for a complex, connected, and ever-changing world—not the world as it was or even the world as it is, but the world that will be when each student leaves school.”

She acknowledges that this has dramatically shifted the leadership landscape and the outcomes schools need to deliver for their students, calling for new (often digital) modes of learning.

Reconnecting with Roots to Fuel Disruption The current pandemic created many new challenges and has highlighted many existing faults within industrial systems and networks. In addition to that, we are in the midst of a global mental health and well-being crisis. Joanne asserts that to address these challenges, it is absolutely critical that people begin by reconnecting to humanity and our planet. She also acknowledges that technology is and will continue playing a huge role in this.

Words of Wisdom to Guide Budding Leaders Joanne urges emerging women leaders to remain true to themselves and be the best version of leaders they can be. She suggests, “Bring your whole person to your work because that is what the world needs.”

Innovation Begins When You Listen to Customers Joanne has been a strong advocate of listening to the people who are impacted by and doing the actual work, for getting inspiration to deliver customer-centric products. As per her, this includes children and teachers and their communities. In

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Supporting Embryonic Entrepreneurs to Bring Innovation in Business Operations

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Maria Jones Founder, CEO & Operations Leader Nerdy Industry 38

erdy Industry is an operations advisory firm focused on supporting budding entrepreneurs on their quest to establish their business operations. From kidpreneurs to entrepreneurs, the firm helps business owners of all levels and ages by offering full operations assessments and by extending its support and resources to better equip them on their journey.

Nerdy Industry also cultivates valued process improvement initiatives that include automation and app-integration.

Nerdy Industry’s mission is to bring efficiency to its clients’ business using innovative operational strategy. The company also hosts fun, educational events to share knowledge and more information on how to turn ideas into a legal business entity and how to initially build a business operations framework.

An Inspiring Leader Maximizing Business Growth As the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Nerdy Industry, Maria Jones manages the company’s operations and initial consultation for each client.

It is extremely important for her to meet all the company’s potential clients in the beginning so they can build a trusted relationship with Nerdy Industry’s leadership team, and feel acknowledged and supported simultaneously.

Prior to starting Nerdy Industry, Maria had more than 20 years of success spanning startups, healthcare, financial services, real estate, and SaaS IT companies. Throughout her career, she has been responsible for reducing operations by 25%, growing revenue by 200% through new project initiatives, and increasing employee satisfaction statistics. She has a keen eye for streamlining operations, optimizing the customer experience, and maximizing customer engagement. Through this, Maria has achieved operational budget savings through process analysis, development, and re-engineering while maintaining a 98% on-time delivery rate.

An industry visionary, Maria specializes in both distressed and business-growth opportunities.

She provides leadership for her clients, optimizes operations, enhances entrepreneurial vision, and leads strategic business planning. Maria

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consistently exceeds the company’s goals and market expectations through her use of responsive leadership and her proactive approach to business development. An inspiring leader building global teams with a collaborative spirit, Maria is also the Director of the Atlanta Chapter of the COO Forum.

She is a worldwide leader in consistency, customer service, operations management, goal execution, and mentoring.

Delivering Entrepreneurial Support to Build Innovative Business Nerdy Industry works mostly with the “Incidental Entrepreneurs” who have remarkable talents and hobbies and have unexpectedly turned it into a business. The company uses its full operations assessment process to learn more about their companies and solicit information about their perceived challenges. Based on its clients’ needs, Nerdy Industry provides a customized operations advisory report that includes key process improvement recommendations.

Operations is ‘Innovation of Execution’. . .

Integrating emerging technology to operations strategy will evolve how we do business.

New Age Technology to Drive Business Growth Opportunities Maria believes that with there being so many new advancements in technology over the years, it is crucial for operations executives to continue exploring how to infuse more automation and artificial intelligence into their business strategies. She says, as the industry continues to innovate, it is up to operations leaders to transform their execution of business strategies, utilize creativity with data analytics, develop non-biased algorithms and introduce machine learning to generate new and emerging business opportunities.

Remarkable Traits of Entrepreneurs According to Maria, a transformational leader is someone who can embrace and lead change resiliently. These special types of leaders are ones who are comfortable with adapting to all situations promptly. They are able to effectively utilize emotional intelligence to support their team on their journeys as a group and as individuals.

Maria Jones

nerdyindustry.com

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through volunteering,” says Maria. She further adds that the professional connections she was able to foster through her volunteer experiences led her to found Nerdy Industry. And her former colleagues would come to her to consult on various aspects of their business.

Leading the Change Living fearlessly has been Maria’s greatest attribute to success. Throughout her career, she has taken many untraditional paths to get to her current destination. Maria acknowledges that there is no one route to success. Leaders must be free to explore lateral career moves to enhance their knowledge in various areas while continuing their quest to lead in other areas of their life. She asserts, “If you want to be a director and no opportunities exist at your organization, volunteer as a director for a non-profit organization of interest. Growth opportunities are available everywhere – you just have to be open to opportunities from nontraditional sources.”

Envisioning the Future Ahead With Nerdy Industry being an operations advisory firm, Maria sees the company to continue to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) to better process improvement initiatives.

These approaches will likely bring exponentially more efficient and effective performance, thus maximizing its level of service and product delivery for clients.

Shaping Young Minds Maria says budding and emerging women leaders to never be afraid to discover new opportunities. More often than not, people don’t pursue these undiscovered paths due to their fear of taking chances. Risks are an intricate function of success. Leaders must make choices with perceived risks to advance their careers.

Driving the Success At the onset of Maria’s career, she had the traditional idea that if she followed a prescribed path then opportunities would just come to her naturally. It wasn’t long after she started in her field that she figured out she needed to let go of this thought. “I opened my mind to seeking more nontraditional paths to uncover new opportunities, primarily

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“Aren’t We Done Obsessing Over Patriarchy?”, Asks AI!

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recent paper published by UNESCO titled ‘I’d Blush If I Could’ borrowed the title from an answer given by the popular voice assistant, ‘Siri’by Apple. The introduction of the publication says that the reference is from Siri’s response to sexist insults voiced by the users and thus the paper questions the gender bias and stereotypes sealed into digital technologies. Isn’t it interesting how all these voice assistants are given a female identity by default and are projected as subservient and polite? Well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the deep-rooted gender discrimination among humans.

Artificial intelligence is no more in a hibernating phase.

Instead, AI adoption and automation have witnessed a huge surge in the past few years. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global AI market is projected to reach USD 266.92 billion by 2027. With such an impetus in the growth of AI, where do we stand in eliminating the gender gap?

The Addiction towards “ Bro Culture” Women in STEM report suggests that according to UCAS data only 19% of females were studying computer science-related courses compared to 81% of students who were male. Why do we have such a decreasing female student population in the STEM field? This widespread gender gap in the technology and computer science fields of study needs to be addressed first to encourage women in tech and AI. We are somehow still addicted to promoting male presence and discriminating against other genders.

KD Nuggets analyzed 1.5 million papers from arXiv and found that only 13.83% of authors are women.

Not only in education but we have gender disparities in publishing journals and research also. Women are kept away from disruptive technologies like AI and machine learning. The conventional patriarchal notions contribute a good portion towards the gender gap we have.

The rising significance and revenue in the field of disruptive technologies like AI have enhanced the job opportunities and talent demand. Women are underrepresented in these tech fields and their talents are not utilized well. Women should be accepted for their skills and should not be served hostile work environments. The lack of women role models is another reason resisting women from joining tech platforms. Women occupy a very minimal percentage of senior positions in AI and tech companies, which in turn reduces female leadership that the future generation can look up to.

The grappling AI bias is an outcome of under-representation

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and misrepresentation in the AI sector. Artificial intelligence has a bad reputation for showing discrimination towards white males. People of color and genders other than male are usually misrepresented by the AI systems. The gender stereotypes, bias, and sexism come from the already existing biases since humans, mostly males are the ones designing them. Achieving gender diversity and inclusion will help us alleviate this AI bias and provide mature ethical AI systems.

Attaining Gender Diversity The reducing percentage of women working in AI should be addressed and improved to ensure the production of responsible AI. Spreading awareness about technology is the foremost step towards the goal. Many companies ignore the issue and let it pass. Companies and tech industries should conduct awareness programs to talk about the issue and let the people at the receiving end of the bias speak for themselves. Men should stop appropriating the position of women and minorities and leave the space for them. Organizations should encourage initiatives to support women in pursuing a career in the tech sector.

Increasing the accessibility of STEM education to more women is another significant step. We need to confront the root of the problem and solve the issues. Imparting confidence to women in building better career paths in technology and computer science will entertain more female population in the tech industry.

Denouncing and unlearning gender roles and stereotypes will help change the perspective. Being a woman in a maledominated AI industry poses many challenges and the unwelcoming workspace forces women to leave. Hiring and retaining female employees and promoting them to senior positions will aid the purpose of attaining gender balance.

Adopting a feminist design thinking approach is a nascent move towards achieving inclusion in the AI sector.

Incorporating feminist unbiased ideas and data into the AI algorithms and designs will develop balanced AI systems.

To attain racial and gender equality, tech companies should adopt these measures and pool more ideas to fight the situation. Inclusive study curriculums, workspaces, and human interactions will help us reach the goal. Why wait till the AI systems get tired of our pathetic patriarchal obsession? Let us fix it by ourselves.

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An Inspiring Woman Carving Her Success in a Male-Dominated Industry

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he world is advancing towards a techdependent future where IoT will be a bigger part of everyone’s life than today.

In such a world, to ace in one’s tech career is a challenging step forward. How do industry leaders think? How did hardships and experiences shape them? What does success mean to them? For answers to these inspiring questions and more, we interacted with an industry leader and a successful businesswoman, Mary T Bunzel, Executive Director at the Connected Systems Institute (CSI).

Mary T Bunzel Executive Director, Connected Systems Institute (CSI) University Of Wisconsin - Milwaukee 46

How Did Her Journey Begin?

A visionary with a keen interest in learning, Mary spent most of her career working in the manufacturing sector with a technological perspective. At the time when she started, her work was unusual. She was responsible for understanding the language of maintenance and operations and translating it into technology solutions that produced outcomes. After this role, she went on to become a student to learn how the world’s largest manufacturing operations found optimal performance at IBM. She learned a lot from specialized experts in the enterprise asset

management field, which now encompasses industrial IoT. From here, Intel recognized her knack for technology and asked Mary to bring her knowledge to work there. This big step brought her close to a network of scientists, board members, senior leadership, and practitioners who are working with digital technology to solve manufacturing problems. As the General Manager of the Manufacturing Industry Solutions Group, she helped shape the direction of advanced edge computing, AI, virtualized systems, cloud data management, 5G, and vision systems. All her experience lead to this day where she heads the CSI at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

A Brief Overview About the Company, As Told

by Her CSI is an internationally recognized, multidisciplinary R&D facility based at UWM. Its primary focus is on academic programming, workforce training, and advanced research, focused on the manufacturing domain. The institute’s vision is to serve as a trusted resource for technology, research, collaboration, education, thought leadership, and community outreach,

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with a focus on emerging IIoT technologies. It further aims to develop a workforce of the future through education and training. CSI works to support the development of a techsavvy workforce, to spearhead cutting-edge IIoT research, and help small and medium-sized businesses harness the power of the IIoT for greater productivity.

The Mindset of An Industry Leader Mary’s greatest skill is bringing great people together. Her peers recognized her skill and put her potential into leadership roles where they required this capability. This skill of hers helped her throughout the career by providing deeper insights, vast knowledge, and real-world experience. She believes her secret is always bringing value to everything she does.

When I think about what the future of advanced manufacturing looks like, I see the futuristic world depicted in the movie Avatar, complex systems of interconnected resources and assets in which people, processes, and technology converge.

A future happening now.

Challenges that Shaped Her to Become A Leader As a young woman working alongside men in the world of factory maintenance and operations, she faced challenges of earning credibility. Her coworkers perceived her as a support rather than a leader. To prove her merit, she had to work harder, be better prepared, and more articulate. Mary, optimistically looked at it as a training field for becoming a future executive. The hardworking habits she followed back then are now imbibed in her work ethic, which makes every obstacle feel like another opportunity. “I am thankful to the other woman leaders who, like me, faced similar challenges.

These are the same ones who are now serving as an inspiration to other young women and other people who may not feel their voice is heard,” she said.

Vital Attributes for A Transformational Leader According to Mary, » Understanding that pressure is a privilege. » Having the ability to break down a problem with a clear view, objectivel » Being vocal about the mission statement and letting people know that » Feeling comfortable in uncomfortable and problematic situations are a few characteristics that a leader should have.

Mary T Bunzel

uwm.edu/csi

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Innovating Products According to Changing Times Having asked how she makes her products appealing to her target audience, Mary said, “Our products at CSI are informative and offer a rich environment for research, utilizing advanced tools.” CSI’s products reach Rockwell, Microsoft, Dell, Fanuc, Cisco, PTC, and Fortinet technologies. The

company members and partners have invested in a workforce for the future. By combining those inputs with the academics taught in engineering, information systems, and business schools, they bring the kind of service students interested in manufacturing technology need.

Disruptive Technologies & Their Impact on Innovation Based on all the years of Mary’s work experience, she says manufacturers are now discovering new ways to apply technology to get better control over their operations.

Disruptive technologies have already transformed the world in so many ways that large companies have largely automated most of their operations, managing their array of factories and assets from centralized control centers.

Mary’s Advice to Small & Medium Business Owners “The real opportunity now is in the small and medium business space. This is where we will see significant innovation. The challenge for these kinds of businesses is to determine where to focus. Their resources are more limited than larger organizations.”

Industry Predictions “Studies indicate that the skill shortage is expanding and that the gap may leave an estimated 2.4 million positions unfilled and put US$2.5 trillion in manufacturing GDP at risk over the next decade”, says Mary. One of the reasons for this shortage is shifting skillsets due to the introduction of advanced technologies and automation. Skills needed for future success must include both digital and skills like critical thinking, working with teams, and collaborative problem-solving.

A Word to All The Emerging Women Leaders Mary says, “Seek diversity of experience and connections.”

Taking inspiration from her journey of networking with influential people from the industry, she suggests that involving oneself in activities like volunteering for assignments on teleconferences, attending after-hours meetings, and actively networking will result in more visibility and value. To break the challenging barriers of the past, it is important to find someone who can lend a hand, make an introduction, or give valuable advice.

“Most of all, let your personality shine through. Ultimately, it is still a people-to-people business. If your partner or colleagues feel connected and motivated with excitement about your project, the result will be beyond your imagination.”

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Leveraging AI and Blockchain to Drive Innovation in the Agriculture Industry

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Yong Hua Lin CEO V-Origin Technology 50

-Origin Technology is a high-tech company with innovation in AI and blockchain for digital agriculture. It builds industrial platform architecture to provide end-toend digitization service. Further, it helps agriculture enterprises improve efficiency and product quality by offering traceability systems for the agricultural product to strengthen trust and food safety.

The platform also supports mass customization manufacturing and provides service between enterprise buyers and agriculture companies, and backs trust in supply-chain finance for banks and enterprises that need financial help.

Within this platform, V-Origin Tech combines image/video analysis and blockchain to build leading traceability technology for things in the physical world. By using AI image analysis, the company develops plant diseases autodiagnosis to help farmers and enables satellitebased assessment for yield management.

End-to-end data management is built on top of the Hyperledger blockchain system to support traceability, trust trading and financial services.

More than 100 agricultural companies and 700 products are supported on this platform.

An Experienced Tech Leader Yong Hua Lin is the Founder and CEO of V-Origin Technology, founded in 2019. Before V-Origin, Yong

was the Director of IBM Research, China, working with the company for 16 years. She was appointed as IBM Distinguished Engineer to lead global AI system innovation. In 2019, Yong was elected as 50 science and technology women leaders in China. To drive the diversity in the field of science and technology, she founded IEEE Women in Engineering Beijing affinity group.

Yong shares that her mother influenced her so much. She was brave with an open mind, though she only could manage to complete middle school. Yong’s mother kept saying her, “Nothing is impossible if you try hard.” When she was 12 years old, her mother spent around her 10-monthsalary to buy the first computer for Yong and she knew nothing about computers. Thirty years ago, Yong was the first kid in school to have a computer, which had shaped her journey. And the word “Nothing is impossible” empowered Yong when facing various challenges during every transformation.

Overcoming Challenges with Agricultural Opportunities Yong expresses that V-Origin Tech developed technologies and products in 2019 and started to roll-out business in the market by 2020. However, the COVID-19 stopped its steps, especially in the first half of 2020. Most of the agriculture

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Artificial Intelligence requires deep innovation and can be used in unlimited broad areas.

Innovation in AI is a marathon. We should be persistent enough. Once it succeeds, it will change our industry and daily life.

Yong Hua Lin

companies refused external business engagement.

As Yong hated to wait and do nothing, she thought about donating face masks to people from rural areas where there were many agriculture companies. Yong further elaborates that face masks were very difficult to buy during those months. V-Origin Tech organized the supply chain of face masks and started donation activities to more than 100 companies in one month. In the 2nd half of 2020, when the situation recovered, the company successfully did business with most of these companies because they remembered V-Origin Tech helped them overcome difficult times of COVID-19.

Accelerating Innovation with Disruptive Technologies Yong believes that technologies like AI, machine learning, and cloud computing have significantly accelerated today’s innovation. By using machine learning, V-Origin Tech doesn’t need to re-design and implement a new algorithm for a new object identification task. The company doesn’t worry about building a hardware and software runtime system before any experiment because of the usage of cloud computing.

Yong believes that with much shorter innovation cycles, more innovation is generated every year. Enterprises require a leader who possesses a robust evaluating ability and can drive innovation, adding more value to the industry.

Leading the Industry with Persistency Yong believes that leadership, persistence, open mind, etc. are important attributes for leaders. Among them, having forward-looking attitude is crucial, especially for those who are leading the transformation. The transformation comes with difficulties, challenges, and obstacles. She suggests that as a leader, one should keep looking forward , avoid struggling in current difficulties and bring in energy to change the challenging situation. The leader also can refresh the mind to find a new way of solving problems.

Leveraging Agriculture as a Shield Agriculture is the backbone of most economies in LIMC (low and middle-income countries) and the main source of food, income and employment for rural populations. Yong cites, according to AgFunder, globally over US$ 4.6 billion was invested in food and agriculture technology in 2015. A large share of the investment was for software and other technological solutions to enhance digital agriculture. Thus, applying advanced technologies such as AI, blockchain, automation, cloud computing and big data in the agriculture industry will have very strong demand that will continue to increase in the global industry. Especially with the impact from COVID-19, agriculture companies, industry and countries are seeking digitalization and internet methodologies to overcome the global challenges.

In 2020, V-Origin Tech launched its digital agriculture platform for multiple industries such as tea, rubber, industry hemp across China, and red wine for small enterprises in Australia.

Within one year, there have been over 100 companies using the company’s technology. Therefore, V-Origin Tech is confident about the future.

Serving Different Industries and Domains Yong aims to drive innovation by cross-domain thinking.

She cites an example; V-Origin Tech’s leading traceability technology is the innovation across digital domain, physical domain, and chemical domain. Today, most traceability systems rely on ID tags, such as QR code or RFID, on the wrapper of goods. The wrapper can be easily changed with a fake ID tag. Even the company applies blockchain technology because all such protection and identification happen in the digital domain only. So, it needs to find a way to link the physical domain with the digital domain. For some products, they will have natural texture, e.g., compressed tea (Pu’er tea), meat, and rubber.

V-Origin Tech innovates texture identification technology by using computer vision and machine learning. Thus, every product can have a unit digital ID that will link to its texture feature. Furthermore, the company can get the chemical feature by applying chemical measurements and link the chemical feature to the digital ID. Based on machine learning’s massive chemical features, it can build a model to classify the original information, such as the mountain information of tea products.

Empowering Women by Encouraging them to be Confident Yong advises the budding leaders to be brave and confident about their beliefs. Sometimes, as women leaders, society might not evaluate your work as fair as fellow male leaders.

The environment around you might have a voice on you, such as not family focus, not friendly enough, or too aggressive as a lady. Yong suggests not paying too much attention to such a voice. Instead, be brave and don’t let such unfair evaluation slow down your steps.

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