ARMONK, N.Y., March 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of
its annual Women Leaders in AI program, today IBM (NYSE: IBM)
recognized 40 innovative female business leaders from 18 countries
who are using IBM Watson to help drive transformation, growth and
innovation across a wide variety of industries. This year honorees
include women leaders from The Clorox Company, City of Austin, The Depository Trust and
Clearing Corporation, EY, Ford Motor Company, ServiceNow and many
more.
Celebrating diverse talent in the field of AI and creating a
culture of inclusion are important as the adverse impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic on women in the workplace becomes more apparent.
A recent IBM Institute for Business Value study revealed that
despite heightened awareness of the challenges facing women in the
workplace driven by the pandemic, gender equality is still not a
top priority for 70 percent of global businesses, according to
business professionals surveyed. Moreover, fewer women surveyed
hold senior vice president, vice president, director and manager
roles in 2021 than they did in 2019.
IBM created the annual Women Leaders in AI program in 2019 to
help encourage increased diverse participation in the field and
provide honorees a network for shared learning. This year's class
of honorees demonstrate how efforts to advance natural language
processing and automation and build responsible AI can be used to
help organizations better predict outcomes, automate processes and
drive new efficiencies.
"As AI adoption continues to accelerate, we believe that
diverse teams are needed to help build and implement trustworthy AI
that can help mitigate bias and deliver explainable outcomes," said
Ritika Gunnar, Vice President,
Expert Labs, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software. "Today, we are
sharing the incredible stories of 40 women who are paving the way
forward in AI for business and impacting how people work and live.
Working with clients in an era of global workplace and workforce
change, we see the need for women and diverse teams working at the
forefront of AI."
The 40 leaders recognized in 2021 were selected based upon the
ways they are using AI as a transformation agent to help drive
results for their organizations and the employees, customers and
citizens they serve. Examples include:
- Improving the effectiveness of advertising with AI:
The Ad Council partners with top advertisers and marketers
to create campaigns that address pressing social issues. President
and CEO Lisa Sherman used IBM
Watson Advertising Accelerator to help improve the effectiveness of
the Love Has No Labels "Fight for Freedom" initiative, which
promotes diversity and inclusion, and is currently leveraging the
technology for their "It's Up To You" COVID-19 vaccine education
initiative
- Empowering independent farmers with crop forecasts:
Farmers in developing countries often lack the tools and means to
critical resources that could help them prepare and grow their
crops efficiently. Manoela
Morais, Chimka Munkhbayar and
Helen Tsai created a solution
called Agrolly, as part of Call for Code in 2020, which uses
IBM Watson to help farmers plan crop production and minimize risks
caused by extreme weather conditions.
- Detecting cybersecurity threats in global financial markets:
The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) provides
post-trade infrastructure for global financial markets,
standardizing and simplifying administration of safety-critical
securities transactions. Poonam
Verma, who oversees DTCC's critical cybersecurity
services function, implemented IBM services to help further advance
the organization's cyber detection capabilities.
- Meeting the challenge of a threefold surge in customer
service calls: As conversation volumes surged due to COVID-19
uncertainty, Ekaterina Ostankova and her team at Lloyds
Banking Group helped design and define a solution using IBM
Watson Assistant that enables customers to get support quickly. She
drives adoption of conversational AI to unlock new opportunities
for the bank and seeks to support customers by resolving ever more
complex queries through messaging and web channels.
- Helping teenagers land their first job with a friendly
avatar: Finding your first job can be intimidating, so
Australian bank Westpac created "Wendy," a friendly digital
coach, that answers spoken and written questions about job
preparation. Annie Shu,
Manager of Strategy and Innovation, used IBM Watson natural
language processing capabilities to help make Wendy engaging and
relatable. She championed Wendy's cause with bank executives and
led the service design and innovation development teams.
The 2021 IBM Women Leaders in AI honorees are:
- Joan Francy, CEO,
AdMed (United States)
- Chimka Munkhbayar, Co-founder, Agrolly
(Mongolia)
- Manoela Morais, CEO and
Co-founder, Agrolly (Brazil)
- Helen Tsai, Web Developer
Lead and Co-founder, Agrolly (Taiwan)
- Airei Soh, Assistant Manager, Marketing Strategy System
& Solution Planning, All Nippon Airways (Japan)
- Leah Karlin, Director of
Machine Learning and Data Engineering, At Point of Care
(United States)
- Fella Benaziza, UX Designer Consultant, Capgemini
France (France)
- Elisabetta Burei, BRM Technology CRM, CheBanca!
(Italy)
- Divya Rathanlal, Emerging Technology Program Manager,
City of Austin Texas
(United States)
- Regina Olivares,
Principal Management Analyst, Clark County (United States)
- Siew Choo Soh, Managing
Director, DBS (Singapore)
- Sandra Corkern, Associate
Director, Real Estate Technology and Innovation, EY (Ernst
& Young LLP) (United
States)
- Jennifer Turner, Senior
Director, Digital Innovation, Strategy and
Transactions, EY-Parthenon (Ernst & Young LLP)
(United States)
- Sabita Sharma, AVP,
Automation and Innovation, Everest Re Group (United States)
- Tracey Hawes, General
Manager, Marketing and Trading, Fine Wine Delivery
(New Zealand)
- Julie Losee, Manager,
Equipment Lease Accounting, Ford Motor Company (United States)
- Denise Stokowski, Group VP, Platform Products,
Gainsight (United
States)
- Hagit Tzafrir, SVP
Healthcare Division, Harel Insurance & Finance
(Israel)
- Annapurna Vishwanathan, Former Head of Digital, HCCB
(Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd.) (India)
- Curren Katz, Director of
Data Science R&D, Highmark Health (United States)
- Satoko Maeda, Senior
Managerial Staff, Hiroshima Prefectural Government
(Japan)
- Mari Sasaki, Data
Construction and Media Product Director, Kakuichi
(Japan)
- Anette Böhm, General Manager, Corporate HR, KBC
Group (Belgium)
- Ekaterina Ostankova, Product Manager – Virtual Assistant
Lab, Lloyds Banking Group (United
Kingdom)
- Kaori Matsue, Senior
Director, General Manager of Responsible Care and Quality
Assurance Division, Mitsui Chemicals (Japan)
- Alu Rodríguez, SVP Business Transformation, NH Hotel
Group (Spain)
- Jeanette Fürst, Director of Sales, OpenAdvice IT
Services (Germany)
- Donatella Sciuto,
Professor of Computer Engineering and Executive Vice Rector,
Politecnico di Milano
(Italy)
- Bharathi Ramadass, IT
Product Manager, ServiceNow (United States)
- Gema T. Pérez Ramón, Director, Taxation Office,
Madrid Municipality (Spain)
- Melissa Dorey, Digital
Experience Principal, Telstra (Australia)
- Lisa Sherman, President
and CEO, The Ad Council (United
States)
- Pam Griffin, Associate
Director, Cleaning Division, The Clorox Company
(United States)
- Poonam Verma, Managing
Director, Head of Security Engineering and Operations, The
Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) (United States)
- Supaluck Umpujh, Chair, The Mall Group
(Thailand)
- Manami Endo, IT Planning
Section, Information System Department, TRUSCO Nakayama
Corporation (Japan)
- Mio Sugihara, Assistant
Manager, System Management Section, TRUSCO Nakayama
Corporation (Japan)
- Catharine Fennell, CEO,
videoBIO (Canada)
- Amy Oding, Operational
Support and Automation Manager, Vodafone (New Zealand)
- Annie Shu, Manager of
Strategy and Innovation, Westpac (Australia)
Explore the stories of how these women leaders are using AI to
help transform their businesses — and the lessons they've learned
along the way — at
https://www.ibm.com/watson/women-leaders-in-ai
About IBM Watson
Watson is IBM's AI technology for business,
helping organizations to better predict and shape future outcomes,
automate complex processes, and optimize employees' time.
Watson has evolved from an IBM
Research project, to experimentation, to a scaled, open set of
products that can run anywhere. With more than 40,000 client
engagements, Watson is being
applied by leading global brands across a variety of industries to
transform how people work. To learn more, visit:
https://www.ibm.com/watson.
Media Contact:
Zachery
Bishop
IBM Media Relations
Zachery.bishop@ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM