12 Inspiring Women In Data Science, Big Data
Women make up half the population, yet it's been well documented that they don't come close to parity in STEM fields. Could the rise of big data and data science offer women a clearer path to success in technology? Here's a list of 12 inspiring women who work in big data and data science.
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Good salaries and career prospects make technology a great choice for those who have an aptitude for math, logic, science, coding, and similar disciplines. However, the field has notably lacked large numbers of women within its ranks, but can big data be changing that? Data scientist was recently ranked as the top job for work-life balance by Glass Door.
Yet the lack of women in STEM fields -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- fields is well documented, and those figures can be discouraging.
For instance, women made up 27% of people employed in computer and mathematical occupations in 1960. But instead of growing over several decades, as many more women participated in the workforce overall, that number had declined to 26% by 2013, according to a 2015 analysis of US Census data performed by the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
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Karen Ebert Matthys cited that data during a talk at the Women in Big Data lunch at Strata + Hadoop World at the end of March. Matthys is executive director for external partners at the Stanford Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME), which sponsors the Women in Data Science Conference, first held in November 2015 with 23 speakers -- all women -- and 400 attendees.
"A lot of us had been to events where there were zero women speakers," Matthys said in her talk during the Strata + Hadoop luncheon, and organizers at those events had plenty of excuses regarding why they weren't able to recruit women as speakers.
In organizing the Women in Data Science Conference, Matthys's organization sought to change that, and it paid off. The event sold out in 19 days. It won participation from 30 universities around the world. "Without much effort we hit 6,000 viewers via live stream. And for a few minutes we were trending on Twitter."
Speakers included women data scientists from Microsoft, Netflix, Google, among other companies.
The first event was such a success that the organization is planning the second one, scheduled for Feb. 3, 2017, at Stanford. Matthys's group is helping others create local versions of the event, too. Her goal for the Stanford event and any regional events is to reach 100,000 people each through all channels, including live streaming.
ICME is also introducing fellowships to help remove financial burdens on women pursuing data science degrees. These will include summer internships with sponsoring companies, and a capstone project.
Women in big data and women data scientists crowded into the room to hear Matthys's presentation at the Women in Big Data lunch at Strata + Hadoop, which also featured two other prominent women in the field.
There are a number of successful, prominent women who aspiring data scientists can look to for inspiration. Here's a collection of a few who spoke at the Strata + Hadoop Women in Big Data lunch and at Stanford's Women in Data Science conference in November.
Executive Director for external partners at the Stanford Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering
Matthys herself started off in a STEM field, and earned a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia. But like many women, she left STEM. She earned an MBA from Stanford University, and worked at Apple and Cellular One in senior marketing roles before moving on to serve as a principal at Indigo Partners, a management-consulting firm.
As an executive director for ICME at Stanford, Matthys is promoting the next event, the fellowships, and working on the 30by30 campaign, which has a goal of increasing to 30% the women in computer science and engineering roles at all levels of organizations by the year 2030.
VP SAS Best Practices at SAS Institute
Twitter: @jilldyche
Dyche was a principal at a management consulting firm, Baseline Consulting Group, which was acquired by analytics leader SAS in 2012. She's the author of several books, including the most recent one, The New IT: How Technology Leaders Are Enabling Business Strategy in the Digital Age.
Dyche is currently working on a side project, an e-book that advocates for simple improvements to animal shelter practices to improve pet adoption rates. She spoke about this project, which is data driven, and her volunteer work at Los Angeles-area animal shelters during the Women in Big Data lunch at Strata + Hadoop.
VP and GM of Storage and Availability at VMware
Twitter: @ybhighheels
Though not strictly a big data pro, Yanbing Li spoke during the Women in Big Data lunch about focus and career goals -- and about how she made adjustments to the roles she pursued within VMware to put her on a path to her larger strategic goal of becoming the CEO of a large company. "We need to be very conscious of not always resorting to the path of least resistance," she told attendees at the lunch. The new path you choose to achieve your goal may not be an easy one. But that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. "Having a clear goal gives me a lot of strength to choose this hard path."
CEO at Nara Logics
Twitter: @jeggers
Jana Eggers is CEO of Nara Logics, an artificial intelligence company that is leveraging new neuroscience discoveries to model data on computers. She's previously owned and operated a number of other companies. She has served as a director of the Innovation Lab at Intuit and as a GM of QuickBase there, and has also worked as an analyst.
She used some of her keynote time at the Strata + Hadoop event in a pitch to recruit new thinkers to the field of AI. "To get to radical improvements, we need new thinking," she said.
Executive Director at Human Rights Data Analysis Group
Keynote video at Strata + Hadoop
Price offered a status update on her organization's ongoing mission to uncover and quantify human rights abuses, during her Strata + Hadoop keynote. Her organization leverages statistical analysis to surface evidence for use in testimony to push for action and change.
The group has worked on a number of projects in locations that include Guatemala, Columbia, and Syria. For the Syria projects, Price served as lead statistician and author of two recent reports commissioned by the Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights on documented deaths in that country.
She is a research fellow at the Carnegie Mellon University Center for Human Rights Science, and earned her PhD in biostatistics.
Cofounder and CTO at Confluent
Twitter: @nehanarkhede
Narkhede is one of the cofounders of Confluent, a company driving a popular big data tool that enables real-time streaming capabilities -- Apache Kafka. Narkhede and her cofounders originally developed the technology when they were all working at LinkedIn.
Big Data Evangelist at Cloudera
Twitter: @ImAmyO
O'Connor joined Hadoop distributor Cloudera in 2013, coming to the company from Nokia, where she served as senior director of big data. She presented a session on big data use-cases for telcos at the recent Strata + Hadoop World event. In her role at Cloudera, she advises customers as they introduce and adopt big data solutions.
She holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from Northeastern University.
Equity Partner, Data Collective at Advisor, Insight Data Science
Twitter: @mrogati
Monica Rogati is the former VP of Data at wearables company Jawbone and a former data scientist from LinkedIn. Today she is focused on providing technical due diligence and advice to the Data Collective venture capital group and serving as an advisor for the Insight Data Science Fellows Program, a post-doctoral training fellowship for bridging the gap between academia and data science careers. She spoke at the Women in Data Science event in November.
She holds a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director at Microsoft Research
ThisWomen in Data Science video interview about the promise of data science for solving big problems is worth watching.
Chayes presented at the first Women in Data Science conference at Stanford in November 2015, talking about network science and its importance in studying everything from online social networks to cancer genomics.
"The big thing is to take risks. Women tend to feel that they need to be more highly qualified to do something," Chayes said during the career panel discussion at the Women in Big Data event at Stamford in November. "You shouldn't let your fear about your own abilities or a fear that you might be an impostor or something have any bearing on the kinds of decisions that you make. You should just take that part of your brain and say thank you for sharing and just put it aside. Seriously, just put it aside. We all have that part of our brain and if I'd listened to that part of my brain I would have had a very boring life."
Chayes holds a PhD in Mathematical Physics from Princeton University.
VP, Science and Algorithms at Netflix
Women in Data Science interview
Smallwood leads an advanced group of mathematicians, data scientists and statisticians at this digital entertainment company. Her group focuses on predictive modeling, algorithm research and prototyping, and other deep analytics across the company. The team is seeking to predict demand for movies and TV shows, to create recommendation models, and to improve customer-retention modeling. Her career has included work at Yahoo as the director of data solutions and at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a senior manager in quantitative consulting.
She holds an MS in operations research from Stanford University and a BS in Mathematics and Philosophy from William & Mary.
Distinguished Engineer at Google
Women in Data Science interview
Carrie Grimes has spent her career at Google, where she currently works on data-driven resource planning, cost analysis, and distributed cluster management software as part of the Technical Institute Group.
"Finding the right algorithm is only part of the problem," Grimes said in her Women in Data Science presentation at Stanford in November 2015. "Even with the right solution from an algorithm standpoint, you have to figure out how to make it work in practice, and data science going forward is a big component of how that happens."
Grimes holds a PhD in Statistics from Stanford University and an AB in Anthropology from Harvard University.
SVP, Global Category Development and Merchandise Solutions at Wal-Mart eCommerce
Women in Data Science presentation
Thompson directs strategy, structure, and the operating model for Wal-Mart to combine merchandising with data and analytics. Wal-Mart is one of the biggest companies in the world, and people think of big companies as being slow, but Thompson said her organization is actually building something more agile inside this big company.
"We are actually building a technology company, a technology startup, within Wal-Mart," she said in her Women in Data Science talk during the November 2015 event at Stanford. She noted that her organization, Wal-MartLabs, has done 15 acquisitions in the past 3 years, employs 3,000 technologists, and runs 12 websites around the world.
SVP, Global Category Development and Merchandise Solutions at Wal-Mart eCommerce
Women in Data Science presentation
Thompson directs strategy, structure, and the operating model for Wal-Mart to combine merchandising with data and analytics. Wal-Mart is one of the biggest companies in the world, and people think of big companies as being slow, but Thompson said her organization is actually building something more agile inside this big company.
"We are actually building a technology company, a technology startup, within Wal-Mart," she said in her Women in Data Science talk during the November 2015 event at Stanford. She noted that her organization, Wal-MartLabs, has done 15 acquisitions in the past 3 years, employs 3,000 technologists, and runs 12 websites around the world.
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