Women at Booking.com: Machine Learning, Product Development & Career Advancement

ABOUT

As an avid supporter of inclusion and gender diversity, Booking.com advocates for the creation of more opportunities for women to enter, advance and ultimately thrive in the tech sector with an aim to redress under-representation in the wider industry. At this session, we will provide an insight into life at Booking.com from the perspectives of women working in a range roles across the business.

SCHEDULE

18:30-19:00
Arrival and Networking Drinks

19:00-19:30
Talk: How Booking.com uses ML product development to create a better user experience: Barbara Millán Mejías and Jenny Tokar

At Booking.com, Machine Learning is not the product, but rather the means to an end. To optimize a product everything needs to start with a customer problem. During this talk we will take you on a tour of our product development methodology, starting with a customer problem all the way to experimentation, and how we use machine learning to do it better.

19:30-19:40
Break

19:40-20:30
Round table sessions

Table 1: I Will Never Be Good At Math
Fleur Wennink, Manager Software Development, Booking.com

From a young age we are taught that if we work hard enough you can do anything you want, but this is simply not true. We are constantly reminded of what we are not good at and we spend a lot of time and energy on improving ourselves. Imagine you spend less time improving what you’re not so good at and more on what you’re doing well, what your talented at.. How much more do you think you can achieve? During this session, we will talk about how you can identify your strengths and leverage them to increase your impact.

Table 2: How To Find The Right Place For You
Tahel Roy, Technical Recruiter, Booking.com

Job hunting is a two-way street, you want to get the job that will be the best place for you. During this session we will teach you how you can find the best place for you - where and how to look for a new place. How to present yourself so that you really shine (CV / Interview etc... ) and how to ask the right questions.

Table 3: Having A Seat At The Table
Allie Vogel, UX Designer, Booking.com

Being the only female on a team can be challenging. During this session Allie will share her insights and experiences on being the only woman in a team and will lead a discussion on how we can all achieve a “seat at the table”.

________________________

SPEAKER INFORMATION

Barbara Millán Mejías | Product Owner - Data Science, Booking.com
https://bit.ly/2KzqHeb

Barbara has been working for Booking.com for the past 4 1/2 years. She started as DS, but for the last one and half years has been working as a product manager for ML related products. Before booking, Barbara earned a PhD in particle physics and worked as a researcher at CERN, where the world wide web was born, and the Higgs particle was discovered.

Fun fact about Barbara: I’m originally from Venezuela. I give online classes to physics students in Latin America, but now I teach them how to apply physics in the industry

Jenny Tokar | Backend Developer, Booking.com
https://bit.ly/2z2Zjkm

Jenny has been working for Booking.com for the past 8 months in a team that focuses on personalizing user experience for frequent travelers. Previous to Booking.com Jenny was working for 5+ years as a java developer.

Fun fact about Jenny: I love traveling so all the work I'm doing at Booking.com is actually for myself :-)