8 of the Most Influential Women in AI

8 of the Most Influential Women in AI

  • On : March 18, 2020

Women in AI are changing the way we use technology today. However, there is still a decent gender gap between men and women in the industry. Therefore, it is important to recognize some of the women that have heavily impacted the industry to drive change.

Here are the top 8 influential women transforming the AI industry:

 

  1. Caitlin Smallwood

Smallwood is the Vice President of Science and Analytics at Netflix – the brain behind the algorithm developments that allow users to have an easy-to-use platform when going to find and watch their favourite TV shows and movies. She heads a team that create new models and algorithms focused on constantly improving the efficiency of the Netflix platform. With a glowing resume – having also previously worked at Yahoo as the Director of Data Solutions, there is no surprise that Caitlin is one of the most highly influential women in the AI industry. #GOALS

 

  1. Layla El Asri

Layla is the Research Team Leader at Borealis AI located in Montreal. Additionally, as a Research Manager at Microsoft, the main focus of her work is based on research around NLP, GANs, deep learning and unsupervised learning. Now that’s what we like to call smarticle particle!

 

  1. Dalith Steiger

Steiger is an incredibly experienced and successful entrepreneur in the AI industry. She is the co-founder of SwissCognitive, which is a trusted network of industries that discuss the impacts and development of AI, and has connected more than 150 companies whilst in this role. Additionally, Dalith has over 2 million employees working under her belt at Swiss Cognitive and is also an AI speaker. Pretty impressive!

 

  1. Melanie Perkins

Melanie is the co-founder of CANVA – a popular and well-known graphic design tool which assists companies in designing campaigns and advertisements without have the need to know the ins and outs of platforms such as Photoshop. As the direct result of Melanie leadership, the company has raised $166 million in funds with 10 million users world-wide. As of October 17, 2019, Canva was valued at $4.7 billion. What a boss!

 

  1. Robyn Foyster

Foyster is an AI leader and figure for Sweep, a company that allows users to find the best retail deals around them both online and instore. She has been able to develop a powerful AI geolocation technology to change the game in the industry. Additionally, Robyn is the owner and publisher of Women Love Tch, The Carousel and Game Changers. What can’t she do?

 

  1. Tess Lau

Tess was named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company in 2015 and was labelled as a “Rising Star” in OZY Magazine in the same year. Being the owner of Dusty Robotics, her passion for robotics and AI has seen her deploy over 75 bots to improve the hospitality industry forever, which also explains why she has been labelled the “Chief Robot Whisperer” at Savioke. A tech wizard!

 

  1. Rana El Kaliouby

Rana is the co-founder of an AI technology company called Affectiva – it uses AI to detect emotions through face and voice recognition. In terms of her achievements, she has been named as 2018’s Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum and was part of Fortune Magazine’s 2018 40 Under 40 list. Additionally, Rana was in Forbes’ 2018 list of America’s Top 50 Women in Tech. Rana is a great example for teaching us that no dream is too high to achieve.

 

  1. Devi Parikh

Devi is passionate about helping those in need, with much of her work being dedicated to improving the lives of the visually impaired through AI. Her background in computing and AI related research led her to become a research scientist at Facebook AI Research, and she currently works as an Assistant Professor at Georgia’s Tech School of Interactive Computing. Devi has received four Google Faculty Research Awards and an Amazon Academic Research Award – making her one of the leading female masterminds in AI research and computing. Bravo Devi!