Thousand Voices

Sonja Griegoschewski is a regional director for Goethe-Institut Central Eastern Europe. She is a Cultural strategist, international networker, and art lover with over 20 years of experience in leadership and intercultural exchange. Expert on contemporary (German) art and culture with an international network of cultural leaders, artists, curators, academics, facilitators, experts, and stakeholders. At ease with independent, not-for-profit organizations as well as major festivals, museums, universities, and within the corporate world. Strong interest in exploring digitalization and artificial intelligence to find ways for enhancing collaboration, society, and creative life, while ensuring that human rights, diversity, and ethical standards are met. Alumni of Freie Universität Berlin (Dipl.-Bibl.) and the University of Wales (MSc Econ) with a passion for life-long learning. Most recently ‘Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy’, an online program at MIT Sloan Management. Proud member of the ‘Goethe Family’ with postings to Croatia, South Africa, Canada, Belgium, Australia, and currently Prague, Czech Republic. Leading role in the development and global implementation of our Internet strategy, global internal evaluation concept, and strategic management tools while based at the Goethe-Institut head office in Munich, Germany. A strong advocate of the European Union and its cultural values, heading the national clusters of ‚European Union International Institutes for Culture‘ (EUNIC) in Canada and Australia. Passionate about sharing my knowledge and experience through tutoring as well as supporting local communities, e.g. through my role as a ‘cultural ambassador’ at the Rotary Club of Sydney Cove.

Dr Yun Sing Koh is an associate professor at the School of Computer Science, The University of Auckland. Her main research area is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Specifically, she focuses on three major research strands: continual learning and adaptation, anomaly detection, and data stream mining. She is passionate about using machine learning for social good, and her research has been applied to interdisciplinary applications in environment and health domains. To date, she has published 100+ peer-reviewed publications in top conferences and journals, including IJCAI, IEEE ICDE, IEEE ICDM, Machine Learning Journal and Journal of Artificial Intelligence. She won the New Zealand Royal Society of Fast-Start Marsden funding (2018) and the United States Office of Naval Research Grant (2019). She has been active in the research community, including serving as the General Co-Chair at the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining 2021, Workshop Co-Chair at the ECML 2021, Program Co-Chair of the Australasian Data Mining Conference 2018 and as the Workshop CO-Chair for the 15th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.

Amy is the Chief Data Scientist at the Australia National Bank (NAB), leading the acceleration of advanced analytics, AI/ML at scale. Prior to NAB, Amy held various leadership positions, including the Global Head of Analytics and Data Science at HSBC, General Manager of Group Data Science at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and the Founding member and Chief Data Scientist at DataSpark, Singtel’s pioneering data monetization spin-off. Amy has extensive expertise in large scale AI/ML ecosystem and end-to-end value chain, with proven commercial success and is recognised as a global leader in AI and data-driven innovation. She is a member of the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authorities AI Public-Private Forum, a Data Board member at MIT Center for Information Systems Research, and an Advisory Board member at Melbourne Business School Center for Business Analytics. Amy also serves as a Trustee at Mental Health Innovations (UK's largest digital mental health charity) and a Founding Editorial Board member of Springer’s Journal of AI & Ethics. Amy is a champion for diversity and inclusion, a frequent public speaker, a co-inventor and co-author of multiple Patents and Publications. She is actively involved in promoting industry-academic collaboration and contributing to industry and scientific standards. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for her leadership and contributions in the fields of data science, and named as one of the global top 100 innovators in data and analytics in 2021 and 2022. Amy has a Ph.D in Data Mining, a MSc in AI, a BSc in Computer Science and an MBA.

Elisha Harrington is an Evangelist on the Innovation team at ServiceNow. In her role, Elisha is laser focused on the future of work, digital transformation, and the power of intelligent systems. As a thought leader in operational improvement and innovation, she is responsible for all efforts to evangelize the transformative world of work for enterprise customers in the Asian-Pacific region. Elisha is helping customers re-imagine the possible and solve important problems to create stunning change. Prior to ServiceNow, Elisha worked for a number of top tier professional services firms, consulting with the largest global and Australian local enterprises across banking, telecommunications and more. From running large Digital transformations (both technical and business). Elisha worked for PwC across technology solutions which included fraud detection, risk sentiment, automation, and advanced analytics as well as blockchain and other leading technology cloud SaaS solutions. Working within C-suite agendas and large impactful programs impacting employee and customer experience, Elisha aims to supercharge productivity scaling across the organization whilst cultivating a culture of innovation at its core.

Dr. Priya Ponnapalli is a senior manager and principal scientist at the Amazon Machine Learning (ML) Solutions Lab, where she leads a global team that helps AWS customers accelerate their ML and cloud adoption across industries, from healthcare and finance to sports. As leader for Amazon ML Solutions Lab’s sports business, she works with customers including the National Football League (NFL), Formula 1 (F1), Six Nations Rugby, and sports organizations worldwide to enhance the fan experience and transform sports using ML. Viewers love seeing her team’s work integrated into game broadcasts. Previously, Ponnapalli was the founding data science lead at JPMorgan Chase, where she created the first implicit feedback recommender system for Chase Ultimate Rewards. Before that, as a senior software engineer on the machine learning team at Bloomberg L.P., she developed and deployed the first social media analytics tool in finance, Bloomberg Social Velocity.

Svetha Venkatesh is an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow, Alfred Deakin Professor and Co-Director of the Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute (A2I2) at Deakin University. She was elected a Fellow of the International Association of Pattern Recognition in 2004 for contributions to formulation and extraction of semantics in multimedia data, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2006, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2021 for ground-breaking research and contributions that have had clear impact. In 2017, Professor Venkatesh was appointed an Australian Laureate Fellow, the highest individual award the Australian Research Council can bestow.

Dr. Cécile Paris is a Chief Research Scientist and the Director of the Collaborative Intelligence Research Program (Future Science Platform) at CSIRO. She holds an Honorary Professorship at Macquarie University and is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney and RMIT. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales.

Professor Batstone is a leading global expert on AI, data analytics and technology. She has more than 20 years’ experience in senior executive roles across the United States of America, Europe, and Australia, helping organisations use technology to meet their goals. She is currently the inaugural Director of Monash Data Futures Institute at Monash University and passionate about the benefits of AI driving major change for social good.

Dr Anino Emuwa is the founder and managing director of Avandis consulting, a strategy and financial advisory firm. She is an international public speaker on entrepreneurship, fintech, emerging technologies, and diversity and inclusion. Dr Anino has also received the 2020 Global Award for Women in Tech ally by WomenTech Network and was named one of the top 125 ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ experts to follow on LinkedIn. In this episode, she talks to us about the journey of African women.

Joanna is a PR strategist, founder of JKPR, advisor and community builder working alongside international ecosystem builders, VC funds, fast-growth companies and startups in tech and creative industries. As a diversity advocate in Tech, she ran a nonprofit organisation called Starther supporting women in technology and entrepreneurship. She also heads up the French chapter of Techfugees, an impact-driven organisation empowering displaced people with technology. Joanna has also co-founded Startup Sesame, a network of tech events connecting different actors of the tech ecosystem.