Women In Data Science
Conference 2021

Leonie enjoys finding meaning through the analysis of data, with a keen interest in mathematics and statistical modelling. Leonie is currently a PhD researcher at the Connected Intelligence Centre, University of Technology, Sydney. Her research is in applying advanced statistical techniques to address bias within surveys. Also a Casual Academic at UTS, Leonie teaches Statistical Thinking for Data science in the Masters of Data Science and Innovation, and develops online micro-credential modules for the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

Leonie has extensive experience in risk management in the financial sector, with a particular focus on credit risk management in mortgage lending, capital models and securitisation. She is interested in cognitive psychology, with previous experience as an adult and paediatric Speech Language Pathologist in the health and education sectors. Leonie also has a passion for music, gardening, reading, and coffee and tea conversations.

Duhita is a passionate data science-aficionado, with 13+ years specialised experience in Data Warehousing, Database designing and Development of Business Applications and Data Products across banking, retail and workforce management industries internationally (India, USA, Singapore, Australia).

Currently, Duhita is The Director of Analytics and Data Science at Assignar, where she is responsible for the big picture of the vision, priorities, strategy and execution for the data and analytics landscape across the entire company.

In the past, she has been the Head of Data Science at Deputy, Data Manager at THE ICONIC and Head of Data at Zalora where the key goal was to make the organization data driven and use data to build better products.

Data, being a relatively new field is still shackled by the archaic ways of the old technology days with women still being far and few. Being a woman in this emerging area brings with it a sense of pride, but also a sense of responsibility. Empowering women to challenge the status quo and consider a career in Data is always on her agenda. She also enjoys keeping herself involved in academia by teaching in the Masters of Data Science and Innovation(MDSI) program as a lecturer for Data Science Practices where she gets to teach and mentor budding Data enthusiasts. She is also a Women in Data Science(WiDS) Sydney Ambassador which is affiliated to Stanford University. She uses that opportunity to organise meetups and datathon workshops to mentor and pique people’s interest in Data. Last year also saw her being ranked as the #5th Top Analytics Leader in Australia by Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia(IAPA).

She holds a Master of Data Science degree from UTS.

She is also fascinated with the possibilities that deep learning (neural networks and AI) holds across industries and aims to help realise its potential in mainstream businesses and intends to continue her quest for knowledge and discovery with an Industry PhD in the field of Neural Networks and Project Management.

Dorotea Baljevic has been in the IT industry for over 10 years building systems, capability and autonomous teams with data across Cisco, Westpac and Reserve Bank of Australia. Currently she is building the international Data Science Practice at Lendlease.

Dorotea has degrees in Information Technology, Master of Business in Technology Management and a Master of Data Science and Innovation.  As part of her Data Science degree, she spent a year abroad studying Computational Neuroscience at Humboldt Universität  in Berlin. During this time an avid interest in the organic processes of Decision Making was formed. She is exploring this further in her role at Lendlease and her PhD at the University of Technology, Sydney with a focus on ethical decision making.

Dorotea embraces organic technologies using a humanistic approach – nature informing technical design and ultimately man working with machine. Data should consequently support and inform the narrative in all we do. Dorotea wants to ensure this story is trusted, relevant and enables the right outcomes.

I am a data visualisation designer, with industry experience in finance, media and consumer insights. I have a Bachelor of Art Theory and History (UNSW), and a Master of Data Science and Innovation (UTS).

Eva hails originally from the Czech Republic and has during her career worked in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and ultimately Australia where she now resides.

She has extensive experience in various business fields such as procurement, quality and change management, to roles in senior management. As a CEO (of automotive company) she successfully led the organization through difficult change to No. 3 company on the market.

As a long-life learner, Eva decided to step out of her comfort zone, leave the corporate life and after sabbatical in Bali, Eva ventured into the tech start-up world.

In 2017, she joined Australian leading company in commercial Airconditioning where she’s responsible for change and quality management driven by data.

She’s always been passionate about tech and data which motivated her to join the non-profit company She loves data where she leads the Sydney chapter and the Global data analytics team.
As a strong advocate for gender and cultural diversity, she’s active in building the professional network for women in Australia.

Nicole is a globally recognized expert and practitioner in project-based learning and student entrepreneurship. As a teacher in the USA, UK and Australia as well as a Head of Department and Head of Year at some of Queensland’s top-performing public schools, Nicole has repeatedly led the design and implementation of whole-school changes to support future ready learning; placing young people at the forefront of co-designing contextually relevant learning experiences.

She is the founder of Future Anything, an award-winning, curriculum-aligned entrepreneurship program for high school students and the founder of YouthX, Australia’s only start-up accelerator program for school-aged entrepreneurs. She has also recently launched Catapult Cards; a fun design thinking tool that unlocks creativity, catalyses collaboration, and launches innovative, scalable, and sustainable ideas that fly.

Nicole is a contributor to the Foundation for Young Australian’s YLab program, has represented Australia as a delegate for the G20 Young Entrepreneur’s Alliance, held in Argentina in 2018 and was a finalist in the 2019 Business News Australia ‘Young Entrepreneur Awards’.

Nicole is an engaging and skilled facilitator, panelist and speaker who is a passionate advocate for equity, the future of education, and empowering young people to bend the future; one youth-led idea at a time.

Katina Michael is a professor at Arizona State University, holding a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Computing, Informatics and Decisions Systems Engineering. She is also the director of the Society Policy Engineering Collective (SPEC) and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. Katina is a senior member of the IEEE and a Public Interest Technology advocate who studies the social implications of technology. She has held 14 annual workshops in the social implications of national security space and chaired 3 international symposia on technology and society (ISTAS) in Wollongong, Toronto and Phoenix. She is the Senior Editor of the socio-economic impact section in IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine and was the editor in chief of the award-winning IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. In 2019 she took on the role of working group chair for the IEEE P2089 standard. In 2020 she received the ICTO Golden Medal for lifetime achievement award for exceptional contributions to research in information systems, and the IEEE Phoenix section’s Outstanding Member Contributing to Global Humanitarian Projects Award for her contributions to a better understanding of the impact of emerging technologies on humanity. In 2017, she also received the Brian M. O’Connell Society on the Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) Distinguished Service Award. www.katinamichael.com

Hema brings more than two decades of experience leading large-scale data and analytics transformation programs for Fortune-100 and ASX clients in USA, India and Australia.

Specialising in data strategy, data platforms, data architecture, governance, big data, cloud & platform engineering, data science and analytics, she draws on vast experience leading large cross-functional teams across multiple shores.

Hema holds a Masters degree in Computer Applications majoring in Data, Digital and System Architecture. A public speaker, industry advisor and mentor, she is passionate about engaging with students and aspiring data analytics professionals as well as raising awareness on data & analytics career pathways.

Hema and her husband relocated to Australia seven years ago to support the cricketing pursuits of their two boys.

Passionate about data equity and data for good, Ethel Karskens is the founder of Civita, a social enterprise that connects data professionals with organisations to increase their data maturity, and the data lead of Blak Impact, a NGO that measures the social impact of programs for Indigenous communities around Australia.

Vaishali is passionate about diversity & analytics and proud to be Stanford Women in Data Science Ambassador (2016-Till date). At Alteryx, she evangelizes analytics to help organizations see insights from their data with self-service advanced data analytics & data science and helps accelerate digital transformation with analytic process automation across APAC. In the past, she has worked at several leadership roles at Tableau, CBRE, Capgemini among others. She strongly advocates using data for social good and has mentored several university students with her code free approach to find meaningful insights from data and solve real-world challenges.

Her passion and contributions have been recognized by the Australian ICT industry as she won the National ARN Women in ICT Award 2017 and was among top 5 women leaders in Technology as finalist in the Women’s Agenda National Leadership Awards.

Theresa uses creative, compassionate and contemplative practices to help communities build better digital and data futures. Building consensus through gaining and maintaining a community’s trust and implementing good practice to advance socially-just data policies is embedded in her work. For more than 20 years, her award-winning work as an educator and researcher has engaged with the ever-evolving relationship between people and emerging technologies when working with data and making decisions. A social informaticist with a PhD in Information Science, she served as inaugural Director of the Master of Data Science & Innovation program at UTS from 2014-2018, leading development of a uniquely transdisciplinary and human-centred curriculum that continues to prepare graduates for the demands of the data science fields. Now working as a freelance consultant, Theresa contributes to government, industry and NGO efforts advancing socially-just data policies, building processes for gaining and maintaining a community’s trust in data/AI use. She is Vice Chair of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) NSW Branch Executive Committee. She also sits on the Advisory Committee for Resilience Brokers, an organisation using systems thinking to unlock value and to improve the climate resilience of cities and communities around the world. Theresa also contributes to international initiatives related to data sharing, serving as an expert for Standards Australia on ISO’s Data Sharing Committee (IT-027-06 and JTC 1/SC 32/WG 6), and on the Resilient and Healthy Cities Working Group for the International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA). Prior to being an Associate Professor at UTS, she worked as a political research analyst in research centres and think tanks and served as a diplomat.

Passionate Marketer, Translator and aspiring Data Scientist. I love to connect people with stories. My vision is to be an the intersection of art, technology and people.

Buvana is a passionate advocate of diversity and innovation to progress the AI, data and digital transformation in the right direction. She believes that creating a diverse community, bringing in more women and the breadth of perspectives is key to constructive and successful innovation.

She has worked across various technology business divisions, across companies IBM, Intuit and Telstra, where she has been a strong sponsor of data to create key actionable business and customer insights to drive strategic programs, growth and transformation.

She’s passionate about contributing to the community and raising awareness and opportunities for women in the AI and data science space. She has been the Stanford University Women in Data Science Ambassador from 2017 to now.

Angela is an AI Professional specialised in Ethics, Explainability, Diversity & Inclusion in AI and recipient of Top 10 Analytics Leaders 2020 from Institute of Analytics Professional Australia (IAPA) and also sits on the Founding Editorial Board of Springer’s new & timely AI and Ethics Journal.
Angela hosted Women in AI camp for young girls with Macquarie Group, Insurance Australia Group, DXT technology, Microsoft and Salesforce to provide AI outreach programs for high schools and also Technology Literacy programs for USYD, UNSW, UTS and Macquarie University Business female students for 100 Girls 100 Futures project.
In 2018, Angela and her team won the Data Science & AI National Industry Innovation Awards for “Best Industry Application of AI for AI & Data driven Underwriting Engine” through ANZ Wealth (Zurich Insurance) & University of Technology of Sydney collaboration. Angela is the co-founder of est.ai start-up promoting Diversity and Inclusion in technology, which is a part of WaiACCELERATE program based in Netherlands She is also a co-author of AI for Gender Equality research collaboration between Women in AI and Vinnova Swedish Innovation agency.

Annette has been involved in data and technology for over twenty years. Working across change management, communications, marketing and business development in B2B organisations has allowed Annette to combine passions in data / technology and communication.

Working with the IAPA Board, Annette grew the IAPA community to more than 8,500 people Australia-wide. As Managing Director of IAPA, Annette is the driving force behind promoting the strategic role of data and analytics in business and helping the industry meet the challenges of a fast-paced data environment, including addressing the analytics skills shortage and fostering data informed decision-making.

Key to this role is the annual Top 25 Analytics Leaders recognition program, the introduction of IAPA-certification for analytics to help those who work in data and analytics gain independent recognition of their skills. New corporate membership options allow analytics-savvy organisations to demonstrate their commitment to enhancing analytics capability, advancing the careers of team members and promoting data-driven decision-making.

Annette holds a Bachelors and Masters in Marketing.

Dr Maria Milosavljevic is the inaugural Chief Data Officer (CDO) for Services Australia. She is responsible for championing the agency’s data and analytics strategy including appropriate data management, governance, use and innovation, as well as creating the right environment and collaborative arrangements to support this. Dr Milosavljevic also chairs the whole of government Data Champions Executive and Network at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, where she champions the innovative and appropriate use of data across the Commonwealth Government. She is also an Honorary Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Australian National University (ANU) and Chair of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) Cyber Security Committee. Before moving to Services Australia, Dr Milosavljevic was the inaugural NSW Government chief information security officer (GCISO), responsible for building improved prevention, detection and a streamlined response to state cyber security. She established the function, delivered and implemented a new whole-of-government cyber security strategy, policy, incident response management plans, cyber incident exercises and other initiatives. Prior to this, Dr Milosavljevic was the chief information officer (CIO) and chief information security officer (CISO) of AUSTRAC, where she designed and led the creation of leading-edge capabilities for the Fintel Alliance, a world-first public-private partnership. She also chaired international capability improvement committees for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. Dr Milosavljevic completed a PhD in AI with the Microsoft Research Institute, graduated from ANU (Australian National University) with an Executive Master of Public Administration from ANZSOG (Australia and New Zealand School of Government), and graduated from the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD).

Aurelie works on leading global initiatives for the implementation of Responsible AI with both the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). With ISO, Aurelie is the chair of the Standards Australia committee representing Australia at the international standards on AI. With the IEEE, she is an expert for the Ethics Certification Program for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, and leads the work stream on Dignity and Agency as part of IEEE’ s Digital Inclusion, Identity, Trust, and Agency (DIITA) program. She is also a member of the European AI Alliance, the editorial board of Springer’s International Journal on AI & Ethics, and of the Australian Computer Society’s AI Ethics Committee.

Rossana has over 11 years of management consulting experience across Europe, the UK and the Asia Pacific region and focuses on technology innovation and responsible management of data and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence. In her day to day Rossana works with the broader ecosystem – including academia and policy makers – to develop practical approaches to enable and accelerate responsible innovation. Enthusiastic about the socio-economic opportunities that come with emerging technologies, Rossana is also passionate about working with organisations aspiring to be at the forefront of social innovation and using technology for the greater good.

I research, facilitate and communicate issues and opportunities around technology, especially data – data rights and ethics, infrastructure and governance. I work across strategy, policy and product, with practical and international experience. I aim to collaborate in creative and emergent ways, linking silos or shifting thinking to make systems more fair for all. Masters in Business & Masters in Music, experienced with public & private organisations, for-profit & non-profit, small & big, across several sectors, in London, Sydney & New York.

I am the glue, I am a Leader who brings senior management, technical resources and the business owners together to achieve success.

Some have described me as a Rainmaker due to my ability to see the solution way outside the ‘box’, serendipitously, and then I make it happen.

I help organisations get the best out of their ICT investment and professionals to get the best out of their skills.

My passion is my ICT Profession. My enthusiasm is infectious and is valued for my can-do attitude which has delivered Programs and Projects in large Federal Government Agencies. My career has contributed to the success of policy strategies in Federal Government Service Delivery Objectives in senior roles advising corporate leaders.

I support programs aimed at building the ICT workforce.

I currently act as an Ambassador to ICT industry championing causes, cohorts, groups as they address the challenges and initiative of our Profession, primarily focussed on Women in ICT, Hack-a-thons, Start-ups and Agile and Disruptive Service delivery, Not-For-Profits.

I am the current ACS NSW Chair 2021-2022. I have held a number of other positions in ACS as a volunteer including NSW Vice Chair for 3 years and Chair and member of ACS Women NSW for 5 years.

Groups I support are: TechGirls, RareBirds, NSydInnovation, Scrum Alliance, ARA.

I have a wealth of technical and management experience in the ICT industry spanning many decades and multiple platforms and organisation sizes from Start-ups to Large Federal Government Programs.

Katrina’s consulting work is based on her research work which shows that global crises provide a space for exploration and collaborative creation of more utopian ways of living and working. Her work on unconscious gender bias focuses on developing new inclusive and equitable organisational practices, and communication approaches which foster engagement with equity and diversity practices across organisations.

She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Technology Sydney.