The Speakers
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ASYA SPEARS
Asya Spears is the founder of Rose Data Studio, a data education firm that cultivates a more diverse data workforce by building data literacy skills to enhance collaborations in population health and higher education. Through her research, teaching, and coaching services, Asya advances the statistics, data storytelling, and career design skills of people from all backgrounds who desire to advance equity in the sectors they enter.
TENEIKA ASKEW
Teneika is an engineer by nature, specializing in big data. She helps clients make the most of their data – both technically and strategically. Her mission is to improve access to big data and allow visualizations to serve as the voice of the business.
Adept at delivering detailed analytical reports, she leverages her tech savviness to create a pipeline of opportunities to pivot into data and tech careers and alleviate the technical assistance gap in entrepreneurship communities by driving growth for women and small businesses.
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DR. ANGELA BALTES
Angela is currently a Data Scientist with Intel Corporation where she focuses on building solutions to optimize supply chain activities. Before Intel, she worked in healthcare and higher education where she has leveraged data visualization and data/predictive analytics for actionable insight to drive decision-making. She earned her doctorate degree in Biomedical Informatics from Rutgers University in 2020, focusing on machine learning approaches to analyze cardiac medical device failures. Angela enjoys spending time with her husband and infant daughter. When she has "some free time" she enjoys exploring hiking trails and playing board games!
SIA SEKO
Sia is a perpetual data learner and practitioner from Tanzania who currently works as a data engineer and data engineering curriculum developer. Sia has a special interest in data and analytics engineering because data cleaning and feature engineering are fun puzzles! The dream would be to create or collaborate on a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) data-driven player development or data literacy initiative sometime in the future. She has also worked with the DataedX group before to produce publicly available data and reporting
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Dr. Melissa Ngamini
I am currently working as a Lead Data Scientist at ADP. In addition to that, I enjoy volunteering as the Head of Education for ATLytiCS. ATLytiCS is an Atlanta based Non-Profit Organization focused on creating a community of individuals empowered to pursue work in the data analytics field, providing new pathways to economic opportunity by offering a data analytics training and certification program. I obtained my Bachelor of Science in Pure Mathematics from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland in May 2009. In 2015, I obtained my Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Mathematics from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North
Carolina.
Dr. Chantel A. Perry “Dr. C”
Dr. Chantel A. Perry, commonly known as Dr. C, is an award-winning data scientist & researcher, best-selling tech author, and proud educator. She has leveraged data and analytics to open healthcare centers for the impoverished, stop cyber crimes before they happen, and take students on the brink of dropping out to walking across graduation stages. Dr. C currently works at Microsoft developing Artificial Intelligence solutions to optimize user engagement and improve marketing decisions.
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Dr. Nashlie Sephus
Dr. Nashlie Sephus is the Tech Evangelist for Amazon AI focusing on fairness and identifying
biases at AWS AI. She formerly led the Amazon Visual Search team as an Applied Scientist in
Atlanta, which launched visual search for replacement parts on the Amazon Shopping
app in June 2018. In 2018, Dr. Sephus became the founder and CEO of The Bean Path non-profit organization based in Jackson, MS assisting individuals and startups with technical expertise and guidance. In September of 2020, she became the owner and developer of the Jackson Tech District—14-acres of mixed-use commercial real-estate in downtown Jackson
to bring tech training and workforce/economic development to the area.
SherAaron Hurt
SherAaron (Sher!) Hurt currently serves as the Director of Workshops for The Carpentries, a non-profit project that teaches foundational coding and data science skills to researchers, technologists, and librarians globally. As Director, she provides oversight and management, planning, vision and leadership for the Workshop Administration Team. She oversees the logistics for over 600 international workshops hosted annually by The Carpentries and Community Members. She served as a member of the taskforce to develop online workshops during the global pandemic. In this capacity, she successfully transitioned the traditional two-day in-person workshops to being offered online. Her passion lies in efficient workflows and streamlining the work for The Carpentries.
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Ufuoma “Ufi” Olakpe
Ufi first fell in love with all things data in her Sophomore year as an Electrical/Electronics Engineering student at Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Eastern Nigeria and has not stopped since. With a Masters in Information Systems and an MBA from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, she has 10 years experience in analytics, database development, managing cross-functional teams, as well as IT project & program management in different industries including higher education, healthcare and AI/ML. Ufi is also co-founder and author at Agbada books, a diverse children’s books company with a mission to share diverse stories with children around the world. When not working on data science projects, you’ll find her taking a gazillion random photos and videos of her kids, ice skating in Denver or singing at the top of her lungs.
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Sibongile Touré
Sibongile Touré is a Brooklyn-bred cinephile, traveler, and data scientist based out of NYC. After graduating with a BSc in Computer Science, Sibongile joined Infosys where she worked on different projects ranging from programming in java to writing SQL queries in MSSQL. This work helped her discover her passion for data science, and she decided to pursue a specialization with Metis, leading her to Dataiku in 2020. At Dataiku, Sibongile implements use cases with clients utilizing many different machine language approaches; she also works on internal efforts like creating advanced web app demos. In her spare time, Sibongile co-hosts a podcast and does volunteer work with girls who code and black girls code.
Germaine Gabriel, Esq.
Germaine Gabriel is a seasoned technologist with an extensive background in product and privacy law. Her experience working with both start-ups and established public companies gives her a unique perspective regarding how to build scalable processes and comply with a myriad of privacy and product laws.Prior to working in Silicon Valley, Germaine was a Presidential Appointee, during the Barack Obama administration
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JAZMIA HENRY
Jazmia Henry seeks to reduce racial and gender bias in sentiment and textual analysis systems through the creation of an African American Vernacular English corpus. She received a Bachelor’s Degree from Tulane University in 2016 and a Masters Degree at Columbia University in 2018. She has a background in statistical analysis, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Econometrics, and Politics. She currently works as a Machine Learning Specialist at Motley Fool and has formerly worked for Morgan Stanley and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
DR. THEMA MONROE WHITE
Dr. Thema Monroe-White is an evaluator, instructor, and champion of emancipatory data science. As an Assistant Professor of Data Analytics at Berry College, she researches racial equity in STEM fields, with a special emphasis on information technology, analytics, and data science. She is particularly interested in understanding the innovative pathways that lead to the economic and social empowerment of underrepresented people of color.