Meet Amazing Women in Data: Transitioning from Academia to Tech/Industry

This event is themed around transitioning from academia to tech/industry. There will be talks from women who will share their career journeys, experiences and advice in making this transition.

Agenda:
• 18:30- 19:00 Networking with food & drinks
• 19:00- 20:30 Lightning talks from our women in data speakers and Q&A
• 20:30- 21:00 Networking & wrap-up

Speakers:

• Thea Lee (https://twitter.com/wearecodenation) - Engagement Director for Code Nation. Responsible for helping our amazing junior Developers start their careers in the tech sector. Code Nation is a Software Development apprenticeship provider and coding school with a unique business-led approach. We create technically mature, commercially aware and industry savvy talent in just 12 weeks, providing the digital sector with the people it demands in the wake of Industry 4.0. The industry is crying out for more diversity and Code Nation are on a mission to shift the norm and make an impact. Our apprenticeship programmes are changing the game and creating a new pool of digital talent, developing from scratch the next generation of technical professionals.

• Sarah Schlobohm (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahschlobohm/) - Senior Analytics Manager, Financial Crime Compliance. Sarah is leading a team of data analysts fighting financial crime. Her team focuses on innovation, automation, and optimisation of the key models used globally to detect and prevent money laundering. Sarah has 18 years’ experience as a data scientist, with the last 8 years focused on financial services. After a PhD in particle physics as a member of an international collaboration that provided evidence for the discovery of the Higgs boson, Sarah joined PWC’s data assurance team and became a chartered accountant. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (EU) and is passionate about data science ethics.

• Elsa Zekeng (https://twitter.com/elsazekeng) - Director and Head of Student Engagement and Enhancement at Jobseekrs. Elsa finished her PhD in Infectious Diseases and Global Health during which joined the Executive team for a start-up called – Jobseekrs. Jobseekrs is a careers platform mitigating unconscious bias at the sourcing and screening stage of recruitment which has raised about £200,000 in investment. She is also Co-Founder of a CIC – Solidarity in Tech (SIT) with a mission to bridge the diversity and equality gap in the STEM sectors when considering ethnicity, gender and neurodiversity. Elsa is a European Commission 2016 young leader and receiver of the Queen’s Ebola medal for service in West Africa after volunteering with the WHO during the biggest Ebola outbreak in West Africa. She advocates on all things: youth empowerment, equality, diversity, development and sustainability framed under the Sustainable Development Goals. She has also been recognised as one of the “Top 50 most inspiring, prominent & influential black voices in UK Tech” by Technation and nominated "One to Watch" by the Northern Power Women.

• Kaylea Haynes (https://twitter.com/KayleaHaynes) - Data Scientist, Peak. Kaylea completed a PhD in Statistics and Operational Research in December 2017 where she researched changepoint detection. Following her PhD she spent a short time at Sporting Data Science before moving to Peak where she works on forecasting and optimisation problems. After a year she was promoted to a team leader and has helped grow and develop the Demand AI team.

Thank you to Evolution (https://www.evolutionjobs.com/uk/) for kindly supporting our events, to the Software Sustainability Institute for sponsoring the costs of the Meetup group (https://www.software.ac.uk/), to Sticker Mule (http://stickermule.com/supports/herdatamcr19-sponsorship) for sponsoring our stickers, and to Peak (https://peak.ai/) for hosting us!

This event is open to anyone who identifies as a woman and by registering you agree to abide by our Code of Conduct (https://www.meetup.com/HER-Data-MCR/pages/28013678/Code_of_Conduct/).