Women in Data Science (WiDS)
  • Home
  • About
    • Blog
    • WiDStory
    • News
    • Research
    • Sponsors
    • Collaborators
    • Contact
    • Donate
  • Conferences
    • WiDS Stanford 2023 Agenda
    • WiDS Stanford 2023 Speakers
    • WiDS Regional Events 2023
    • Ambassadors 2023 >
      • Ambassador Advisory Council
    • WiDS Ambassador Program
    • Past Conferences >
      • WiDS 2022
      • WiDS 2021
      • WiDS 2020
      • WiDS 2019
      • WiDS 2018
      • WiDS 2017
      • WiDS 2015
    • Conference Committee
  • Datathon
    • Datathon Details
    • Datathon Resources >
      • Datathon Press Release
    • WiDS Datathon Workshops 2023
    • Datathon News
    • Datathon Collaborators
    • Datathon Committee
  • Podcast
    • Podcast Committee
  • Education
    • Workshops >
      • Workshop Instructors
      • Workhop Committee
    • Next Gen >
      • Next Gen Resources
      • Next Gen Committee

Building bridges between business and academia with Karina Edmonds

10/7/2021

 
Picture
Karina Edmonds, Global Head of Academies and University Alliances at SAP, has spent her career building bridges between business and academia. On the WiDS Podcast she talks about her passion about promoting fairness in data science by bringing more young people, women, and underrepresented groups into the field.
Though Karina showed an early aptitude in math, her high school counselor advised her against pursuing an engineering degree. She ignored his advice and went on to earn her undergrad degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Rhode Island and a PhD in Aeronautics from Caltech. She landed her first job as a speech-to-text engineer at TRW where she was awarded her first patent. She then moved on to technology transfer as a patent agent at the Jet Propulsion Lab. She bounced back to academia, managing corporate partnerships for Caltech, and then returned to industry as Google’s University Lead for Google Cloud AI/Machine Learning. She is now at SAP as Global Head of Academies and University Alliances, continuing to connect industry and academia.

In her diverse career spanning business and education, she has seen increasing power concentrated in big tech companies through their ownership of immense datasets and computational power. Companies are also attracting talent away from universities that are now having a hard time hiring enough computer science faculty. She says there are some creative ways to bring back some balance by companies hosting visiting faculty and industry partners coming in to teach at universities.

Karina is also very concerned about ensuring fairness in data science. She explains that it’s not just the software that's being developed, but the datasets that are used to create predictive models. If a company just collects data from one demographic and then applies it to everyone, that introduces bias, and then the algorithms amplify these biases. She believes that the only way to address this is to have more ethnic, gender and geographic diversity in the field of data science. She sees a vital need to encourage more women and minorities to enter the field to bring diverse perspectives to data science.
​
For people interested in pursuing a career in data science, she advises gaining the basic skills in math, science, and programming languages, but the most important quality is the ability to learn because everything is constantly changing. She recommends keeping your options open, acquiring as many skills as possible, and sharpening your interpersonal skills. Karina also says to challenge yourself. “We don't grow in a space of comfort. You grow when you're challenged, it's okay to be uncomfortable because that's likely the place of greatest growth. There’s no such thing as failure, you either win or you learn.” 
Picture
Karina Edmonds, SAP

​Listen and Subscribe to the WiDS Podcast on 
Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher.

Comments are closed.

    Categories

    All
    WiDS Ambassadors
    WiDS Conference
    WiDS Datathon
    WiDS NextGen
    WiDS Podcast
    WiDS Regional Events
    WiDStory
    WiDS Workshops

    RSS Feed

Initiatives

Conference
Ambassador Program
Datathon
Podcast
Workshops 
Next Gen

Follow Us

LinkedIn
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
​Blog

connect

LinkedIn Group
Facebook Group
subscribe
donate

© 2022 Women in data science. Women in Data Science is a Registered trademark of Stanford University. 

  • Home
  • About
    • Blog
    • WiDStory
    • News
    • Research
    • Sponsors
    • Collaborators
    • Contact
    • Donate
  • Conferences
    • WiDS Stanford 2023 Agenda
    • WiDS Stanford 2023 Speakers
    • WiDS Regional Events 2023
    • Ambassadors 2023 >
      • Ambassador Advisory Council
    • WiDS Ambassador Program
    • Past Conferences >
      • WiDS 2022
      • WiDS 2021
      • WiDS 2020
      • WiDS 2019
      • WiDS 2018
      • WiDS 2017
      • WiDS 2015
    • Conference Committee
  • Datathon
    • Datathon Details
    • Datathon Resources >
      • Datathon Press Release
    • WiDS Datathon Workshops 2023
    • Datathon News
    • Datathon Collaborators
    • Datathon Committee
  • Podcast
    • Podcast Committee
  • Education
    • Workshops >
      • Workshop Instructors
      • Workhop Committee
    • Next Gen >
      • Next Gen Resources
      • Next Gen Committee