SL-4 Building a Data Team with Diversity Front of Mind

Data Futurology - Leadership And Strategy in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science

In this episode, we have Virginia Wheway Vice President of Data & Analytics at Koala and Jan Sheppard, Chief Data Officer at the Tertiary Education Commission in New Zealand.

Diversity is a broad area, and it includes gender, age, ethnicity, etc. Fostering diversity in an organization starts with the recruiting and hiring process.To make sure you hire the right people for the job you need to establish what you need or want for that role before you start recruiting, and then take out all your biases that might come into play.

Diverse teams need leaders who are brave and ready to get outside their comfort zones, stay tuned to learn their tips on how to foster diversity in your team!

Quotes:

• "In another company I was at before, the machine learning people have been repurposed to design dashboards."
  
• "The sorts of people I hire are not so rigid that they will only do one thing."
  
• "The real skills that are shining through and that people need are flexibility and adaptability because covid has made us in many ways. We need people who are adaptable and also understand the business."
  
• "Especially when appealing to women, it takes a different description. A lot of job descriptions across the board use male language, very direct and definite language. There are a lot of lessons to take out of this, but certainly how we advertise ourselves and how we build our relationships."
  

Thanks to our sponsors:

Shine Solutions Group

Talent Insights

SAS

Women in Analytics (WIA) Network

Growing Data

Read the full episode summary here: #SheLeads Ep 4

Enjoy the fourth episode of our #SheLeads Series!