COED:CODE - Technology's Role in Eradicating Inequality & Poverty

Our next Meetup is on Tuesday, November 21. This time we will focus on Technology's Role on Eradicating Inequality and Poverty

Rough Schedule -
6:00-6:45pm Arrival / Food / Drinks / Networking
6:45-6:50pm - Intro/Welcome
6:50-7:20pm - Keynote
7:20-8:10pm - Panel Discussion / Q&A
8:10-8:45 pm - More Networking / Food / Drinks
8:45pm - Wrap up

Keynote - Hephzi Pemberton, Founder, Kiteka (http://www.kiteka.com)

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Hephzi is a business founder, angel investor and believer in the power of good business to transform society. After completing a bachelor’s degree at Oxford University, Hephzi began her career in Investment Banking at Lehman Brothers. In 2009, she co-founded Kea Consultants, a financial headhunting firm that specialises in investment and high-growth organisations, which she quickly grew into a profitable and sustainable business. At the end of 2015, Hephzi exited Kea Consultants to pursue her next venture.

In 2016, Hephzi founded Kiteka (http://www.kiteka.com/) to enable female entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa to access digital opportunities through mobile technology. Research shows that women across this region are 25% less likely to own a phone than men, but when they do it directly increases their income and the opportunities for themselves and their families. The vision for Kiteka is to create an all-female, all-mobile network across Africa that is connected to the digital economy and enabled through technology.

The pilot project in Uganda is working with 80 female entrepreneurs in Kampala, who have access to smartphones for the first time through a phone loan scheme. They meet monthly to learn more about business administration and technology, as well as peer mentor each other through the learning process. Within six months of launch, the Kiteka women are reporting an average 20% increase in their small business profitability through smartphone ownership. This is due to increased efficiency, connectivity with their customers and the opportunity to become mobile money agents using the smartphone. The digital outsourcing opportunities for the network are split between social media procurement and data labelling/cleaning for the AI and Machine Learning space.

Kiteka is currently in pilot phase and looking for more UK based businesses to test the outsourcing services of the Kiteka network, as well as seeking advisors/trustees with either data science or software engineering backgrounds to help scale the business outsourcing process.

This will be followed by a panel discussion on how Technology is being used to eradicate inequality and poverty. Our panelists for the evening >>

Panelist - Kavita Kapoor

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Kavita (https://twitter.com/kavitakapoor) is a programmer, software designer and technology strategist. Although she has won a BAFTA she isn’t a Bollywood star. Yet. She looks after Asia strategy for Tido Music (http://tido-music.com/), an advisor to the Micro:bit Educational Foundation (http://microbit.org/) and a published author http:// http://bit.ly/29bw9j7 . She has previously held positions at London 2012 and Channel 4 Television.

Panelist - Jenny Mulholland

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Jenny studied Physics at university and entered IT in 2006 as a graduate C++ programmer within Symbian’s Professional Services department, helping Motorola, Fujitsu and others make phones based on Symbian OS. In more recent years Jenny’s professional interests have extended into project management, and her current role in technical pre-sales where she helps Softwire’s customers explore their requirements and writes bids for new projects.

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Panelist - Taryl Law

Taryl is an experienced educational social worker, specializing in work with young people with learning disabilities and their families. She is also cofounder of How Do I, an award-winning social enterprise that supports life and vocational skill development for people with additiona

l needs, raising aspirations and providing real-time support into employment and independent living through assistive technology.

Panelist - Elena Sinel

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Elena is the founder of Acorn Aspirations, an education start-up which designs learning experiences where young people across the globe interact with leading experts in artificial intelligence, virtual, augmented and mixed realities, entrepreneurs, designers and marketeers to create solutions that solve real life problems.

Prior to this, she worked as international specialist consultant with 9 years of experience in poverty reduction strategies, rural livelihood development and poverty alleviation with a specific focus on creation of small and medium enterprise development, product design, marketing and fundraising in Central Asia, the Balkans, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.

Panel Moderator - Anne Currie

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Anne is an engineer who is enthusiastic about containers and everything else. She’s been helping to build complex software systems for over 20 years and is a co-founder of the Force12 project