On October 4 to 6 2017, I had an opportunity to attend Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC-2017) conference for women in computing which was held at Orlando, Florida USA. The Grace Hopper Celebration is the world’s largest gathering of women technologists. It is produced by AnitaB.org and presented in partnership with ACM. The conference aim to connect, inspire, and guide women in computing, and organizations that view technology innovation as a strategic imperative. I was impressed by keynote speakers Melinda Gates, Dr. Fei-Fei Li and Dr. Sue Black OBE. These speakers helped me to see in a different way the role and value of women in transforming a society. The speech by Dr Fei-Fei Li stimulated my ambition to invest more in Artificial Intelligence (A.I). According to Fei, “A.I will change the world who will change A.I”. I therefore encourage girls to invest in this amazing technology.
We had an opportunity to meet big technology companies like Google, HP, Amazon, Twitter, Snapchat, Microsoft, Facebook just to mention a few. At AnitaB.org booth I framed the I am statement; I am a data-scientist who is ready to support girls education. This is my mission and I am striving to promote the use of data to support education especially in developing countries.
My trip was fully sponsored by HP company and I had a chance to attend their welcoming event at Sea world, Orland. GHC-2017 was an amazing experience that helped me gain additional skills, knowledge and exposure. I encourages all other women in the field to pursue the scholarship that will be open in February 2018. If you want more information, don’t hesitate to reach out AnitaB.org.