E is for Eskwelabs Issue 71 - Women in Tech and Fighting the Digital Divide 💬

A woman empowered is a woman equipped with skills for the future of work❗

Mar 21, 2023

Ciao! This is Meg speaking, sending big hugs to all women out there who are making their mark as lifelong learners. 🙏 Through your data skills, YOU have the power to make a difference—to uncover inequalities that exist, to create opportunities for those who are underserved, and to uncover untold stories that make us all inspired. ✊ So let’s get started!

As you read this letter, I’d like you to reflect on this question: What does it mean to be a woman in tech this 2023? 🖥️

How are women revolutionizing data literacy in this day and age? 🌌
Why can learning data be equated to contributing to the fight for accessible education for all? ⚒️
What does it mean to be a Filipino woman this 2023? 👩

Happy reading!

Reading time: 8 minutes

Women in Tech in the Philippines✍️

Technology is a constantly changing industry, and women have increasingly been playing a larger role in it. 👑 In the Philippines, that role is expanding even further. This section is a celebration of women at the forefront of bridging the gender gap in the industry. 🌉 Their stories are a testament to the tremendous potential women have when it comes to technology.

🎯 Angela Chen-Delantar, Eskwelabs

Angela is the co-founder and CEO of Eskwelabs, a startup focused on edtech which aims to revolutionize education on data skills for individuals and teams. In 2021, she was in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia list featuring 300 entrepreneurs, leaders, and trailblazers across Asia, all under the age of 30, who are finding new opportunities in the COVID-19 pandemic. Together with co-founder Aurelien Chu, they have been included in the “Social Impact” category, which recognizes young leaders using business tools to address regional problems.

Eskwelabs offers upskilling programs, connecting learners directly with employers to accelerate employment opportunities. Eskwelabs is extending its project-based learning approach to innovate online delivery models to reach diverse learners, democratizing access to meaningful careers for workers in Southeast Asia and beyond.

🙋‍♀️ Audrey Pe, WiTech

At the age of 15, Audrey founded Women in Technology (WiTech), a community organization that educates, inspires, and empowers youth to break gender barriers and use technology to make positive change in society. She taught herself programming and computer science, realizing the lack of support and female role models in the industry.

WiTech organized the first student-led conference for female students in tech in the Philippines and traveled to Marawi, a neglected area in the Southern Philippines, to teach basic programming skills to teens living in evacuation centers. In addition, WiTech provided used laptops and curated tech education modules for their school. Audrey intends to continue promoting tech equality and launching outreach projects across the Philippines, with the ultimate goal of making tech education accessible to youth worldwide, regardless of their gender or socioeconomic background.

💼 Stephanie Sy, Thinking Machines

Despite the tech potential in the Philippines, its resources are scarce. This is why Stephanie founded Thinking Machines—a data science startup with the goal of helping organizations make better decisions using data. Her startup captures information from high-resolution satellite imagery, which is used to estimate poverty and infrastructure development throughout the country.

Stephanie left Silicon Valley to pursue this meaningful venture. She’s on the 2018 Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 List and is an Asia Society Young Leader.

🎙️ Reina Reyes, Analytics Head at Ayala Corporation

Reina Reyes, a physicist and former astrophysics postdoctoral student at the University of Chicago, is now the head of analytics at the Ayala Corporation in the Philippines. Reyes shifted her career focus after what she describes as a “very early midlife crisis” and moved back to the Philippines, wanting to work on projects that would have an immediate impact on society. Reyes says she uses many of the skills she developed as an astrophysicist in her current position and, most importantly, it allows her to touch people’s lives. Reyes is also the founder of Pinoy Scientists, a blog and Instagram account that features stories of Filipino scientists for a Filipino audience, and she hosts Science Says, a children’s science show on a Filipino TV channel.

Reina graduated from Ateneo de Manila University with a degree in physics. She then earned her master’s in high-energy physics in Trieste, Italy, and was accepted to Princeton University’s Department of Astrophysics for her PhD. There, she made headlines with a groundbreaking observational test of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which described the relationships between gravity, space, and time, analyzing data from 70,000 galaxies and finding that they were clustered and grouped together across the universe as predicted by Einstein’s theory.

These inspiring stories of women leading the way in technology are just a few of the many powerful examples of the impact that women have had in the tech industry, both locally and globally. 🌏 From transforming education through Ed-Tech to opening tech access to underserved communities, women are continuing to break down barriers and create meaningful change in the field of technology. 💜

By investing in initiatives that empower women in tech and by providing access to education and resources, it is possible to create a more inclusive and equitable future for the industry. 🌱

Creative Experiments with AI 🖼️

In this newsletter, we have previously made fun projects on Midjourney and other AI tools. While its results have been incredible, there is no denying the fact that the datasets can be biased and some of them come with issues. 🌱

Recent experiments in Midjourney have shown that when selecting prompts, some words come with more meaning and weight than others. What I mean by this is single-worded prompts such as “human,” “man,” and “woman,” all show white figures with similar caucasian features. When prompted with races like “Asian,” “Native American,” or “Indian,” the results aren’t as varied as we’d hoped they would be. Furthermore, prompts on careers like “teacher,” “doctor,” or “professor,” sadly, only show different versions of middle-aged white males. ✏️ It seems that in order to really reflect people across cultures and races, adjectives and descriptors are necessary. Our role as data professionals now is to unlearn the bias and help ensure that AI has the data to make these results more diverse. 🌈

Curious, I thought of a prompt that should generate an image easily discernible to us Filipinos. ☀️ I asked Midjourney to imagine Gabriela Silang as a Gen-Z in 2023.

Gabriela Silang was a Filipino revolutionary leader who fought against Spanish colonialism in the 18th century. She was known for her strong commitment to justice and equality, and her willingness to challenge oppressive systems. 💪 While the concept of data and the importance of equitable access to it did not exist during her time, we can draw inspiration from her leadership and principles to envision how she might have fought for an equitable data environment if she were alive today. 💡

So, I asked ChatGPT to paint us a picture.

🔑 Access to data: Gabriela Silang may have advocated for increased access to data, particularly for marginalized communities that are often excluded from data-driven decision-making processes. ✅ She may have called for greater transparency in the collection and dissemination of data and pushed for data to be made freely available to those who need it most.

🌆 Data privacy: Gabriela Silang may have fought for greater protection of personal data, particularly in the context of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. 🤝 She may have called for stronger regulations to protect individuals from data breaches and pushed for more transparency around how personal data is collected and used.

📚 Data literacy: Gabriela Silang may have recognized the importance of data literacy in enabling people to make informed decisions and participate in data-driven decision-making processes. 🎤 She may have advocated for greater investment in data literacy programs, particularly in marginalized communities, to ensure that everyone has the skills and knowledge necessary to use data effectively.

⚖️ Data ethics: Gabriela Silang may have been concerned with the ethical implications of data collection and use, particularly in relation to power imbalances and social justice. ✊ She may have called for greater accountability among those who collect and use data and pushed for ethical guidelines and codes of conduct to be developed and enforced.

If you have any AI-generated artwork like the ones above, you can share them with us through our social media posts! 📝 If you have any creative prompts and suggestions you want us to try, let us know in the comments section below.

Diversifying Access to Data Literacy ✨

Actually, it is not that difficult to imagine modern, empowered women who are passionate about creating opportunities for lifelong learning through data literacy. Filipina Homebased Moms or FHMoms is a freelancing group for those who seek high-value remote, digital jobs—especially after the pandemic. 💜 In this partnership, Eskwelabs develops the technology to provide online data upskilling courses with educational materials and processes to upskill the learners. 📊

These moms went beyond the Data Literacy Skillscourse and joined a Mentor Preparation Sprint (MPS) with the goal of applying the industry-relevant skills they have learned through mentorship toward others. 🗺️ This learning sprint successfully concluded last February 2023 and the resulting mentors are now ready to coach others to become an expert in their own fields. 👏

“The Mentor Preparation Sprint at Eskwelabs is highly regarded for its interactive and hands-on approach to learning. As one of the learners, I appreciated the opportunity to apply what I learned through role-playing and case studies, and found the mentorship personal exercises to be particularly helpful in understanding how to effectively mentor others.
The sprint also provided valuable insights on how to develop good data analysis questions and conduct data-driven research. Overall, I felt that the sprint was a valuable experience that equipped me with the knowledge and skills necessary to become an effective mentor in the future.”

MPS Cohort 1 Learner

Data literacy is at the core of democratic access to data and knowledge. Let’s fight for open spaces for those that may have been excluded from engaging with data and equipping them with the skills to create meaningful, transformative change. 🌠

These passionate feelings and thoughts will continue in Issue 72! I’ll see you next time.

💌 Learning with you,

Meg Ruiz

Junior Content Designer at Eskwelabs

E is for Eskwelabs