October 4 (Monday) 12:15 - 13:15 (ET)
The day before the conference officially kicks offs, we will host a networking session between researchers and practitioners.
The networking session will be held on the Gather platform. Researchers must dress their avatar in white-grey, representing the “ivory tower of academia”, and practitioners must dress their avatar in green, representing “work in the field”.
A diverse group of practitioners will be present at the networking session, including:
Greg Bybee, Anastasia Miliano, and Robert Upton from Avela will be using the networking session to meet potential job applicants. More information available here.
Greg is the co-founder and CEO of Avela Education and the co-founder of PoliScribe. Greg previously led marketing, business development, sales development, customer success, and professional services at NovoEd. He grew NovoEd from pre-revenue to millions in ARR, growing 200% year-over-year, from 100,000 to 1.6 million learners, and from seed funding to acquisition by Fidelity. Greg sits on several Boards of Directors, including Leadership High School and MathAction, as well as the Board of Advisors for Rutgers University’s Center for Innovation Education. Greg also advises a number of startups, including HiCounselor, Jobscan, and BoldABC, as well as large enterprises and investors (PE & VC) evaluating the education space. Greg holds a MA-Ed and MBA from Stanford and a BA from Harvard. He lives in San Francisco and loves skiing, scuba diving, exploring new places, and trying new things.
Julia Chen is a writer, editor, and arts professional. She is a graduate of Boston University with a Bachelor’s degree in English and has worked primarily in the world of nonprofit, Off-Broadway theater (with a focus on marketing and development). Julia was most recently a finalist in Fiction for Kundiman’s 2019 Mentorship Lab and a member of Winter Tangerine’s April 2019 intensive workshop in New York City. Her work can be found in No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry and Honey Literary. She is currently an Assistant Fiction Editor for The Offing and leads communications for the City of San José’s data equity project.
A data activist and critical thinker, Gulsen Guler works as a researcher and data literacy consultant to examine and reimagine the relationship between data, decision making and power. Gulsen is also a trained social worker and has experience in youth work in the justice system. She witnessed the limitations of data collection and classification of the reporting systems as well as the real-world harm this has caused. Her lived experiences in this field inspired her to develop a human-centric approach to data literacy for dismantling techno-deterministic narratives, building trust and bringing accountability. Her work is informed by intersectionality, data feminism, situated learning and sociotechnical imaginaries. She holds an MSc in Communication Studies and was listed as a data changemaker for her outstanding work in the field.
Dr. Gina Helfrich is Program Officer for Global Technology at Internews, a nonprofit supporting independent media in 100 countries. Gina earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from Emory University in 2009. Since making a career switch into tech in 2014, she has worked to make technology better serve the needs of marginalized people. At Internews, Gina manages programs to support digital rights for all and improved digital safety for journalists and human rights defenders, especially through collaborating with developers of open source technologies. Prior to joining Internews, she served as Director of Communications and Culture at NumFOCUS, a nonprofit supporting open source data science and scientific computing.
Christine Keung is the Chief Data Officer for the City of San Jose and a 2020-21 Harvard Business School Leadership Fellow. At the start of the pandemic, she joined a COVID-19 task force in the U.S. Small Business Administration to improve access to the Paycheck Protection Program. Christine began her professional career as an early member of Dropbox’s security team, and later Chief of Staff, serving as the operational lead of the company’s legal, policy, and security organization. She was also Head of Business Operations at Fountain, a growth-stage AI/ML startup, where she led the company through data regulation changes like the European Union’s GDPR and the U.S. Privacy Shield. Christine earned her B.A. in Economics at Wellesley College and her M.B.A. at Harvard Business School.
CEO/Founder, Women at the Table. Co-founded and leads the <A+> Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms, a global coalition of technologists, activists & academics who focus on affirmative action for algorithms & creating gender equality, so that machine learning does not embed an already-biased system into our future. <A+> and Women at the Table also lead the f<a+i>r feminist AI research network funded by IDRC, Incubating Feminist AI: From Paper to Prototype to Pilot with a focus on the global south and particularly regional work in LAC, MENA and SEAsia. f<a+i>r and <A+> are dedicated to moving past the discussion of structural bias in the analog systems from which the digital is derived (and the acknowledgement of intrinsic bias and discrimination at the heart of AI systems), to catalyzing research and pilots that create new systems instead of merely fixing bias in the old systems.
Anastasia is the Head of Client Success and Services at Avela. She leads our client engagements and is responsible for ensuring our clients have the best experience possible. Anastasia joined Avela from Bitsbox, where she was the COO and managed the creation and distribution of tens of thousands of boxes of coding instructional materials sent monthly to schools and families in all 50 states and 72 countries. She has a background in mechanical engineering, worked on a political campaign, and was on the varsity men’s crew team at Dartmouth (as a coxswain). She’s a proud Maine native who fell in love with the mountains and now lives in Boulder, CO.
Chilean Lawyer, Master in International Law, Investment and Trade from the University of Chile and Master of Laws in International Law (LL.M.) from the University of Heidelberg developed her thesis on AI regulation in the European Union. With more than ten years of experience in intellectual property and technology regulation, for the past 4 years she has focused her work on the study of the social impacts related to artificial intelligence systems and their regulation. Catherine is director and founder of the Chilean NGO Optia, the first Observatory for Algorithmic and Transparency and Inclusion in Latin America.
Ramya Ravichandran a mission-driven consultant, data scientist, and policy professional focused on cross-sector collaboration to build a more equitable world. She has supported organizations ranging from local government to the private sector, including roles in technology and data policy at EY and UN OCHA. She currently works at the intersection of technology and social impact with the global advisory and communications firm APCO Worldwide. She also volunteers with DataKind, a pro bono data science organization, in collaboration with the City of San Jose. She holds a Master of Public Policy degree and a bachelors in Computer Science, both from the University of Virginia.
Robert (Bobby) Upton is a Data Analyst and Algorithm Engineer at Avela and a Research Assistant for MIT Blueprint Labs. Bobby works closely with Parag Pathak and Josh Angrist on economic analyses and market design initiatives. Previously, Bobby was a Research Assistant at MIT Department of Physics and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Bobby has degrees in math and economics from MIT and will continue his education at MIT as a PhD in the Economics department. When he’s not cursing at his Stata code, Bobby enjoys running and exploring his latest home base (currently Washington, DC).
Ben Winters is EPIC Counsel and leads EPIC’s AI and Human Rights Project. His work focuses on AI and automated decision-making applications that disproportionately affect marginalized communities, such as surrounding the criminal legal cycle. He is a graduate of Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he was Editor-In-Chief of the Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights and Social Justice and the President of the Data Law Society. While in Law School, he interned for the New York State Attorney General’s Bureau of Internet and Technology as well as worked on telecommunications policy at Common Cause/NY, among others. He holds a B.S. in Communication Studies from SUNY Oneonta. He is a member of the bar of D.C. and New York State.
Three employees of Avela will be present at the networking session and they are hoping to meet potential job applicants. Here is note from Avela.
Avela is an education technology startup focused on equity in education admissions and enrollment. We give enrollment, admission, and award officers the tools to make equitable decisions about the allocation of educational opportunities. We work with school districts and charter networks across the country, including Oakland Enrolls, Tulsa Public Schools, Jersey City Board of Education, and New Orleans Public Schools. We also work with a range of nonprofits and NGOs, including Teach for America and the Inter-American Development Bank.
Our platform has four parts to cover each stage of the admission journey, from exploring options to applying and final selection and admission. Our flagship product, Avela Match, is used for running coordinated matching markets to assign individuals to programs, such as public school placements in choice districts. We also offer a range of consulting services to help districts implement enrollment reforms and advance equity in educational programs.
We’re looking to hire an additional algorithms engineer / data analyst in the next few months and are eager to connect with any EAAMO participants who are exploring next steps in their careers.