Learn, Grow, and Succeed in AI

On June 3rd, 2021, Toronto Womxn in Data Science held a screening of Coded Bias and Q&A with filmmaking Shalini Kantayya led by Shingai Manjengwa. Shalini Kantayya: Shalini Kantayya is the filmmaker of the critically acclaimed and timely film Coded Bias. Coded Bias premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. She directed the National Geographic television series Breakthrough, Executive Produced by Ron Howard, broadcast globally in June 2017. Her debut, Catching the Sun, premiered at the LA Film Festival and was named a NY Times Critic's Pick. Catching the Sun was released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo Di Caprio, and was nominated for the Environmental Media Association Award for the Best Documentary. Kantayya is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fullbright Scholar, and an Associate of the UC Berkley Graduate School of Journalism. Shingai Manjengwa: Shingai Manjengwa is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fireside Analytics Inc., a data science education solutions company. Fireside Analytics develops customized programs that teach digital and AI literacy, data science, data privacy, and computer programming. Shingai developed Canada’s first inspected data science curriculum for high school students that uses case studies to teach data management, data analysis, and computer programming skills. Data science courses by Fireside Analytics have over 500,000 registered learners on platforms like IBM’s CognitiveClass.ai and Coursera. A data scientist by profession, Shingai is also the Director of Professional Development/ Technical Education at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Toronto, where she translates advanced AI research into educational programming to drive AI adoption and innovation in industry. Shingai serves on the advisory council for, "Accelerating the adoption of AI in healthcare,” a program to empower front-line healthcare workers with AI skills by the Michener Institute of Education at UHN and the Vector Institute. Shingai also serves on the board of the Canada Institute on Governance (IOG). Shingai’s book, ‘The Computer and the Cancelled Music Lessons’ teaches data science to kids from ages 5 to 12 and she holds a Master's degree in Business Analytics from New York University's Stern School of Business. Shingai is the 2020 recipient of the Public Policy Forum, 'Emerging Leader' award. You can find Shingai on LinkedIn and Twitter: @Tjido.

Data scientists are one of the most sought-after roles but you may have overlooked a key player on the data team- Data Engineers. Data Engineer is one of the fastest-growing tech roles. With a focus on ensuring data availability, their work enables data analysts and data scientists to deliver insights and data products. From building, testing and maintaining data pipelines to ensuring compliance with data governance and security, data engineering is the secret sauce to an effective data strategy. Join us on January 19th as we speak with experts in the space on Data Engineering and Machine Learning Operations. Keynote Angela Amador Director, Data Engineering at RBC Angela is a Computer Scientist and IT Manager with over 25 years of experience in the area of Business Intelligence and Data Marts, with ample exposure to the analysis, design, development, testing and tuning of solutions, and the management of business and technical teams. Panelists Delina Ivanova Associate Director, Data & Insights at HelloFresh Canada Delina has over 10 years of experience across data and analytics, consulting, and strategy with roles spanning financial services, public sector and CPG industries. She is currently the Associate Director, Data & Insights at HelloFresh Canada where she leads a full-service data team, including data engineering, data science, and business intelligence and automation. She is also a Data Science and Machine Learning instructor in the professional development programs at the University of Toronto and University of Waterloo. Michelle Ark Staff Data Engineer at Shopify Michelle is a Staff Data Engineer at Shopify, focusing on building and supporting tools for batch data transformations. Shipping critical projects at Shopify now for three and a half years, Michelle began her Shopify journey as a Software Engineering intern. Serena Ma Sr. Data Engineer at RBC Serena Ma has been a Sr. Data Engineer for four years. She's inspired by embracing the power of parallel computing and providing business insights. One of her achievements at RBC is the completion of a Business Match - Entity Resolution for Business Corporation Information. She also loves to bake Leili Noorian Manager of Data and Analytics at Avanade Leili is a Manager of Data and Analytics at Avanade in Toronto with an MSc, Computer Science from the University of Western. With extensive experience in Data Engineering and Analytics and experience working in Software/Financial/Consulting firms, we're excited to have Leili join us as a panelist. Leili leads teams of Data Engineers and Data Analysts designing and implementing Analytics and Data platform projects.

Patricia Arocena is a Director, Technical Research, Innovation and Technology at Royal Bank of Canada, responsible for understanding emerging technologies and helping drive adoption across the bank. Prior to joining RBC, Patricia held leadership innovation positions at Tier-1 research institutions in Canada, PWC, and other banks where she helped create Data and AI-powered solutions for the Financial Services industry. She earned her PhD in Computer Science and MEng in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto, and has been published in numerous scientific journals. Patricia lives in Toronto and is an avid gardener when there is no snow on the ground.

Diane Fenton Diane Fenton is a Director of Data Science, on the Data and Analytics team within Technology and Operations at Royal Bank of Canada, responsible for development and delivery of machine learning models across the bank in addition to leading high-performing AI teams. After completing a master’s degree in Pure Mathematics at the University of Calgary, Diane joined RBC in Toronto five years ago and proceeded to implement NLP-focused data science solutions across RBC. Recently, Diane returned to Calgary to join the newly opened RBC Technology Hub, and is looking forward to getting in some skiing this winter. Liz McQuillan Liz is a Senior Machine Learning Research Scientist at Ada, where she dedicates most of her time to developing novel NLP methodologies and creative implementations of existing methods for NLU. Previously, she was the Director of Applied Science (formerly an ML Research Scientist) at Graphika where she developed novel methods for large scale causal inference and NLU in an effort to discover underlying causal mechanisms in complex social systems, as well as a Research Analyst for NYCDOE’s Office of Policy and Evaluation working on novel applications of machine learning for teacher and student evaluation, as well as a Data Fellow with Uptake.org. Liz has been published in several scientific journals for both her causal inference and NLP work. In a former life, Liz was a cognitive neuroscience researcher exploring the biological processes that affect attention and decision making in humans. When she isn’t working at Ada, you can find Liz hiking with her dog or eating her way around NYC. Aishwarya Allada Aishwarya is a Master of Applied Science(Computer Science) graduate from the University of Waterloo with experience in the research field of Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. Her research interests lies in Natural Language Understanding, Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence. Apart from keeping up with the latest research and technology trends, she spends her free time sketching, singing and playing badminton. Yasmine Maricar Yasmine is an experienced Machine Learning Developer passionate about new technologies and the application of AI in the media industry. Currently working as a Data Scientist in the video game industry at Ubisoft, she's leveraging deep learning models for various initiatives in the NLP space and exploring creative ways to apply NLP/NLG for content creation in video games (dialogue generation etc.). Before coming to Montreal three years ago, Yasmine graduated with a Master’s degree in Computer Science from ENSIIE and holds a Master’s degree in Data Science from Université Paris-Saclay in France. Always happy to connect with other people and help them get into the Data Science field, Yasmine also enjoys reading and drawing in her free time.