Diversity In Tech Awards Shortlist Is Announced

The Diversity in Tech Awards (DITA), in partnership with JP Morgan, has announced the finalists of the 2024 awards.

This year’s event will also honour Dr. Alessandra Sala with the prestigious Grace Hopper Award, recognising her outstanding contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence. Dr Alessandra, Global President of Women in AI & Senior Director of AI and Data Science at Shutterstock will deliver the keynote speech at the ceremony happening on 19th September in the RDS, sharing her insights on AI Excellence: Cultivating a Diverse Ecosystem.

With well known tech brands, Ericsson, Workday and Fidelity Investments, featuring across multiple categories the competition to win is fierce. Also amongst the big names that will be attending on the night to showcase their diversity achievements are Oracle, Accenture & Pinterest. 

Now in its seventh year, DITA uniquely celebrates diversity and female achievements within the tech industry. The awards aim to further the dialogue around equality, inspiring ongoing commitment, transparency and collaboration across the sector to foster a more inclusive workplace for all.

Claire Rush, Executive Director Global Technology, JP Morgan said of the awards, “JP Morgan is extremely proud in this our third year to partner with the Diversity in Tech Awards once again. These awards highlight the critical importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in driving innovation and creativity. Technology flourishes when diverse perspectives come together, and these awards recognize the trailblazers making the tech world more inclusive and equitable. In supporting these awards, we not only celebrate the strides being made but also reinforce JP Morgan’s commitment to cultivating a tech landscape where every voice is respected and valued”.

The awards ceremony will take place on September 19th at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin, organised by the Dublin Tech Summit. This event will highlight the achievements of companies and individuals promoting diverse backgrounds and genders with Ireland’s thriving technology industry.

Tracey Carney, Managing Director of the Diversity in Tech Awards, commented, “As we announce the 2024 finalists, we continue to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion within the tech industry. Recognising trailblazers like Dr. Alessandra Sala, we celebrate the transformative impact of diverse perspectives. This year finalists reflect the dynamic range of talent and dedication driving progress in our field. Their stories of innovation and advocacy exemplify the strides being made to ensure a diverse and equitable tech landscape for all”.

With 18 prestigious awards, DITA offers organisations and individuals the opportunity to stand out. Whether you’re a trailblazing innovator or a committed advocate, these awards allow you to share your diversity journey and celebrate female achievements.

Judge, Yonah Welker, Public Technologist, Former Tech Envoy said of their involvement in the judging, “As a technology envoy, I found our cooperation with DITA productive and critically important specifically for areas of public technologies.  Supporting better representation in technology and policy, we support better accuracy, efficiency and accessibility for AI models and available data.” 

“For instance, women were historically limited in medical research. Infrastructure and urban datasets used for city planning are known to be” gender-blind”, but also less accurate for ‘invisible’ disabilities such as cognitive and sensory impairments. Some facial recognition systems use ear shape or the presence of an ear canal to determine whether or not an image included a human face. However, this system didn’t learn from sufficient patterns to recognize people who lack these parts or suffer craniofacial syndromes or using assistive devices. Medical assessment systems are known to be created based on “normalized attributes” demographic and health groups. It may predominantly exclude some severe cognitive and mental impairments among young population, attributing it only to older groups e.g. MENA region and diabetes type 2 predictions/analytics. It’s known that some medical solutions addressing breathing issues were developed after short-term observations. After longer period of tests, it was found that the system is not so efficient and bring negative side-effects, however it was already sent to production. It can be reinforced by different machine learning techniques (supervised learning – human-induced errors during the selection, labelling, unsupervised learning – statistical lack of input, representation, raw data can reinforce social disparities, reinforcement learning – environment driven errors). Finally, reflecting diverse stakeholders for physical and digital infrastructure, local and regional solutions,” he continued.

The DITA’s take place on September 19th at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin.