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Datathon 2022

HerWILL – Women Inspired in Life and Leadership, has recently held a Datathon between tech women of color in the United States and tech women in Bangladesh, in partnership with AI4OPT (AI Institute for Advances in Optimization), SBDH (South Big Data Hub) at Georgia Tech, and BdOSN (Bangladesh Open Source Network). The Datathon was preceded by a series of workshops custom made to give an in-depth overview of Data Science and prepare the contestants for the intense 48-hour competition.

342

Program Participants

Story In Numbers

110

Datathon Contestants

96

Participating Universities

66

Cities

20

Worlwide Mentors

11

Winning Contestants

8

Final Teams

3

Winning Teams

In this unique program, Women from two different corners of the world teamed up, bonded and worked on a challenging dataset to solve a real world problem provided by the AI4OPT researchers.

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Around 20 top Data Scientists from six countries gathered to instruct, supervise, and mentor the students for the competition.

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The top three winning teams collectively received $5300 in cash prizes and are now being matched with research and internship opportunities to fill the market demand for Data Scientists.

KEY FINDINGS

  • Technical Skill Improvement: Events such as HerWILL’s Datathon impove the Data Science skills very fast. With 9 workshops, HerWILL’s event was able to improve more than half of its participants’ Data Science technical skill, where their average score improved from pre-event 3 to post-event 4 on a 1-5 scale.

  • Necessity of More Such Events: Participation from Bangladesh outweighed participations from the United States. While it’s true that communication and program promotional pipelines needs improvement especially in the US (reach was made through the faculty), lower participation in the US directly correlate to the lower representation of women of color in tech in general, emphasizing the necessity of our program.

  • Building a Community of Future Leaders: Besides Data Science, participants are equally interested in learning about each other’s cultures and way of life and work as well as the technical concepts. Teams participating for the second time reported having a deeper learning and a greater sense of belonging to a community of brilliant and ambitious women. Continued meetings are requested.

TOP PARTICIPATING UNIVERSITIES

  1. BRAC University

  2. University of Houston –
    Victoria

  3. BUET

  4. UNC Chapel Hill

  5. SUNY Old Westbury

  6. Texas A&M

TOP EIGHT FINALISTS CAME FROM

  1. Texas A&M University

  2. University of Washington

  3. BUET

  4. BRAC University

  5. University of Dhaka

  6. University of Houston

  7. University of Chittagong

THE PROGRAM MODEL

HerWIll’s Datathon 2022 is made dynamic with the objective of meeting the evolving needs of our industry and academic partners. Our model includes:

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  • Nine 2-hour online workshops with live instuctors in group settings.

  • Instructors are experts who provide real-life examples to bring content relevance and thus make Data Science less intimidating.

  • 100% of the program was run virtually crossing geographic boundaries and time zone issues.

  • Ten Data Scientists supervised the participants during the competitions from five different time zones.

  • Custom-built project-based workshops were held to give an overview of Data Science. The courses went from basic to intermediate levels in depth subject areas to ensure success for all contestants.

DATATHON DATASET CAME FROM AI4OPT TO:

  • Predict hourly taxi trip requests by location to identify request patterns

  • Build a prediction model to anticipate trip request surges and plan for better taxi deployment strategies

THE GLOBAL LEADERS

HerWILL gathered the Global Experts in Data Science to educate, empower, and elevate a talented group women to create the future global leaders of Data Scientists.

WORKSHOPS LED BY THE HERWILL TEAM

  • Motivation + Why │ Tech Support & Setup

  • Introduction into Data & Databases

  • Design Thinking by Google

  • Statistics/Descriptive Analysis (1)

  • Statistics/Descriptive Analysis (2)

  • Overview of Data Science Methods

  • Machine Learning (1)

  • Machine Learning (2)

  • Evaluation & Validation

HERWILL WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT OVERVIEW

HerWILL has developed a program that brings together project based hands-on exercises delivered by experts in various fields of Data Science, industry leaders, and academic researchers to launch and grow careers in Data Science and AI. The multi-year, multi-faceted program built a community of Data enthusiasts that will be groomed to be future leaders and matched with hard-to-reach opportunities.

PARTNERSHIP

HerWILL and AI4OPT have entered a five-year visionary partnership to bring higher paying career and entrepreneurial opportunities for historically underrepresented communities, including the underserved global women, youth, and other diverse underemployed individuals. HerWILL’s Bangladesh partner BdOSN has played a huge role in engaging the students in this successufl competion.

WHAT THE WINNING TEAMS HAD TO SAY

WHY DATA SCIENCE

Women represent only 10% of the tech workforce. On the flip side, Data Science jobs are in the top five highest paying opportunities with the greatest demands for talents. Our goal is to bridge this gap in high demand and low supply of skilled talents through Data Science education, benefiting women with better economic opportunities and organizations with better talents. HerWILL’s program will help talented women get recognized, trained, and certified to play a bigger role in the global tech future.

HerWILL Datathon 2022 – THE PILOT

This was a Pilot program run in the United States. HerWILL wanted to see how the disadvantaged women of color in the United States can engage in learning Data Science and participate in a competition to solve real-world problem. When placed with tech women in Bangladesh, the outcome was extraordinary that paved the path for building the Future of Work of diversity, equity, and inclusion at an international level.

Sessions from Datathon 2022

About HerWILL

HerWILL, a 501(c)3 non-profit based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, sponsors activities and coordinates community efforts in any portion of the globe to increase STEM-career opportunities for populations disadvantaged by structural gender or racial injustices, therefore contribute in achieving UN SDG5 (Gender Equality) by 2030.

With Gratitude to:

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