Tag: Tech Industry

Anthropologist in Fintech: Interview with Priyanka Dass Saharia (Interview #3 in the Interview Series)

For my third interview in the Interview Series, I interviewed Priyanka Dass Saharia. Priyanka Dass Saharia is an anthropologist working in tech startups, mostly seed to early venture stage in their product development. These companies broadly fall under the rubric of tech-based initiatives that aim to accelerate positive social, environmental and governance change. To do this, she routinely employs a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques. In addition to anthropology, she has also studied economics and sociology in both India, where she grew up, and the United Kingdom, where she currently resides.

Over our conversation, we discussed the following:

  • Priyanka’s experiences as an anthropologist in tech, including her current work in fintech
  • Strategies for socially and environmentally equitable entrepreneurial investment
  • Skills anthropologists might need when working in tech and suggestions for how to develop them
  • Recommendations for how anthropologists can cultivate their quantitative thinking

To learn more about Priyanka Dass Saharia, check these out:

Data Scientist, Entrepreneur, and Artist: Interview with Emi Harry Part 1 of 3 (Interview #4 in the Interview Series)

For my fourth interview in the Interview Series, I interviewed Emi Harry. This is the first part of three of our conversation. Emi Harry is the co-founder of Naina Tech Inc., a New York-based tech startup that is poised to launch an adaptive learning platform for early childhood education in the U.S. and Nigeria’s underserved communities. As a highly skilled data scientist and social entrepreneur, Harry is also on the board of Alula Learning, an EdTech learning management systems provider, and Manna, a health and nutrition company, both in Nigeria. She has had a diverse professional experience, having worked in the food, oil and gas, entertainment, and fashion industries in Nigeria, as well as the entertainment, non-profit, and education industries in the United States. Currently, she balances her time between working in tech, creative writing, and fashion designing.

Her educational qualifications include B.S. in Mathematics, University of Lagos, Nigeria; Master’s in Social Entrepreneurship, Hult International Business School, San Francisco; M.Sc. in Data Analytics/Science, Fordham University, New York, and is on track to earn a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Pace University New York.

During this first part of our conversation, we discussed the data science company she founded and how she learned data science. 

Links to the next two parts of the interview:

To learn more about Emi Harry, check these out:

Data Scientist, Entrepreneur, and Artist: Interview with Emi Harry Part 2 of 3 (Interview #5 in the Interview Series)

This is the second part of my interview with Emi Harry as part of my Interview Series. In it, she discusses her experiences of racial discrimination in data science as a black woman, how she manages her dual background in data science and fashion, and how she leverages her storytelling and communication skills as a data scientist.  If you would like to start at the beginning of my interview with her, click here.

Links to the other two parts of the interview:

Emi Harry is the co-founder of Naina Tech Inc., a New York-based tech startup that is poised to launch an adaptive learning platform for early childhood education in the U.S. and Nigeria’s underserved communities. As a highly skilled data scientist and social entrepreneur, Harry is also on the board of Alula Learning, an EdTech learning management systems provider, and Manna, a health and nutrition company, both in Nigeria. She has had a diverse professional experience, having worked in the food, oil and gas, entertainment, and fashion industries in Nigeria, as well as the entertainment, non-profit, and education industries in the United States. Currently, she balances her time between working in tech, creative writing, and fashion designing.

Her educational qualifications include B.S. in Mathematics, University of Lagos, Nigeria; Master’s in Social Entrepreneurship, Hult International Business School, San Francisco; M.Sc. in Data Analytics/Science, Fordham University, New York, and is on track to earn a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Pace University New York.

To learn more about Emi Harry, check these out:

Response-ability Conference Talk

@geralt

On May 21st, Astrid Countee and I presented at the 2021 Response-ability Conference. We discussed strategies for leveraging data science and anthropology in the tech sector to help address societal issues. The Response-ability’s overall goal was to explore how anthropologists and software specialists in the tech sector to understand and tackle social issues.

Here is an abstract for Astrid’s and my talk:

Download [13.05 KB]

In the coming months, Response-ability plans to publish our presentation, so if you are interested in watching it, please stay tuned until then. When they make the videos accessible, they should post them here: https://response-ability.tech/2021-summit-videos/.

I appreciated the whole experience. Thank you to everyone who helped make the conference happen, and Astrid for doing this talk with me.