One of the cool things about innovation, is looking at how new technologies and methods develop. After all the hype we’ve heard about the metaverse and how it kind of disappeared, we hear little about people who actually find exciting news cases and put it to good use…until today!

I chat with Karlien Kriegler and David Wright - co-founders of Hello Ara. Hello Ara is a tech-forward, market research company in South Africa that has created an entire environment to run focus groups in the metaverse. So, what does it mean to create a metaverse environment for market research? And how is AI utilized in several stages of its life cycle? What are the local and cultural considerations for South Africa as opposed to the US and Europe?

And how close are we to getting a hologram of Cher asking me about my beauty routine and skincare concerns? That’s a SPOLIER, people! Let’s get to the episode!

One of the cool things about innovation, is looking at how new technologies and methods develop. After all the hype we’ve heard about the metaverse and how it kind of disappeared, we hear little about people who actually find exciting news cases and put it to good use…until today!

I chat with Karlien Kriegler and David Wright - co-founders of Hello Ara. Hello Ara is a tech-forward, market research company in South Africa that has created an entire environment to run focus groups in the metaverse. So, what does it mean to create a metaverse environment for market research? And how is AI utilized in several stages of its life cycle? What are the local and cultural considerations for South Africa as opposed to the US and Europe?

And how close are we to getting a hologram of Cher asking me about my beauty routine and skincare concerns? That’s a SPOLIER, people! Let’s get to the episode!

Whew! We made it to the end of 2023! Join me as I remember my favorite moments and guests of the year, with my favorite pearls of wisdom that they discussed. It's a cornucopia of knowledge from the HealthTech, Financial Services, Music Streaming, Analytics, Art and other industries.

Generative AI has already started to have major implications in regards to the content we consume - and this is especially true in music! In today’s episode I chat with Eyal Golshani, VP of Data Science at Vevo, the world’s leading music video network, to discuss how data and generative AI influence their work.

We explore how their Data Science team uses data, talk about AI generated content, the effect of emerging platforms such as tiktok, what kind of bias they deal with and how they communicate data to promote stakeholder trust.

We also discuss AI's emerging place in the industry and what it may look like in the future. Eyal also shares what he looks for when hiring for data science roles.

AI is rapidly changing the landscape of innovative healthtech. In this episode I chat with Dr. Yoni Goldwasser, a digital health investor and entrepreneur, about the exciting new trends in healthtech and whether or not AI will advance enough to replace doctors in the future.

We discuss how accurate medical models need to be in his opinion, how he and his team of investors evaluate new healthtech startups in terms of algorithms, bias in the data and he provides tips on what makes a good startup pitch.

Progress in healthcare and medical research requires a lot of data. In the era of Big Data health data is among the most valuable and the most private information anyone can have. Two major hurdles with finding quality medical data are access to that data in a private and ethical way as well as bias on the data due to underrepresentation of women, certain racial or ethnic groups.In this episode I talk to Dinidh O’Brien about how donateyourdata.org and DataLake are trying to solve this problem with a patient-first approach to sourcing medical data for research. Data Lake is an EU-funded start-up creating a global medical data donation system based on blockchain technology, with privacy and informed consent as fundamental pillars.We discuss this data donation framework and how it addresses the issues of privacy, consent, data monetization and working to minimize biases. Dinidh explains how they approach patients to opt in, how they vet organizations that request access to this data and how they plan to expand throughout Europe and the US.

In this episode I chat with Rich Edwards, CEO of Mindspan Systems, about the changing tech and data landscape for financial institutions - especially big banks versus regional ones. Additionally we discuss how Mindspan turns tech into a commodity, and data from what was once a regulatory liability into a democratized operating asset.

In this age of consolidation, we chat about how data is the smaller bank’s secret weapon to improve service, add innovation and combat bias in financial data (which historically barred access to services from under-represented communities). We also chat about how financial data is shared more broadly among the financial institutions through the open banking framework, as well as what that means for privacy and competitiveness.

In this episode I talk to Ryan Jansen and Paul Blankely, the founders of Zenlytic - a company that strives to bring the world generative AI-powered, self-serve business intelligence. But, what does it all mean? How does it work? Most importantly, will it make the analyst role obsolete in the future?

Join us as we discuss the problem that Zenlytic aims to solve, how LLM’s understand your business data, how they will affect the role of the data analyst in the organization, and where data products are today in the innovation cycle.

FemTech, or Female Health Technology - which includes apps such as period-trackers, is experiencing unprecedented growth. But, nowhere is this podcast’s tagline “How Life Affects Data and How Data Affects Life” more relevant in this industry (in the shadow of the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe V. Wade, earlier this year).

In this episode, I talk to Bethany Corbin, a FemTech Innovation and Data Privacy Attorney, about the FemTech industry and its challenges in a post Roe V. Wade world, what kind of data these apps collect, unique data privacy concerns, and how these were effected by Dobbs. Additionally, we look into calls to delete period-tracking apps. Bethany discusses some actual cases of data privacy violations. She also gives a few tips on how to vet such apps to make sure they are compliant with stringent privacy standards. We also touch on data and aggregation and also utilizing data in this space.

We talk about the kind of data they used, the challenge of collecting it and processing it so quickly, how data changed throughout the pandemic, how they approached issues of bias and privacy and how AI figured into the equation. We also touched on some hot topics in the news - the proposed moratorium on generative AI research and its effect on public health as well as the effect of social media on teen mental health.

The field of Public Health has always involved collecting and analyzing data but when a worldwide pandemic hit suddenly, it was necessary to speed up these processes so as to make decisions and recommendations in real time. As the pandemic changed and shifted, with vaccines and treatments, so did the need for public health data. In this episode I talk to Amelia Burke-Garcia and Lucy Rabinowitz Bailey of NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent research organization, who conducted just such a study in real time to understand the pandemic’s effect on public mental health and coping strategies.

We talk about the kind of data they used, the challenge of collecting it and processing it so quickly, how data changed throughout the pandemic, how they approached issues of bias and privacy and how AI figured into the equation. We also touched on some hot topics in the news - the proposed moratorium on generative AI research and its effect on public health as well as the effect of social media on teen mental health.

In this episode we tackle the issue of AI generated art - Recently the news has been abuzz with names like chatgpt, Dall-E, Lensa AI and other services that utilize AI to generate art. Is this the beginning of the end for human creativity and artistry? I am joined by Tery Spataro, an author and creator who uses AI tools to create and enhance her art - we talk about how these tools actually get used and what it means for the future of human artistry, privacy and copyright. Lastly we discuss some current hot topics that have been in the news recently involving AI and art

Mohamed Kamara, Founder and CEO of InovCares, discuss their app for women, particularly women of color, that provides access to culturally-sensitive clinicians. It combines real-time metabolic health data gathering with telehealth, computer vision, artificial intelligence in order to provide access to quality maternal healthcare. We discuss data, privacy and his experience as an entrepreneur in the Healthcare space

In this special episode to commemorate National Coming Out Day on October 11th, I give my perspective on what it means to come out in the workplace, why it's important and why it's not a singular event but rather something that happens continuously throughout our careers.

In this special episode to commemorate National Coming Out Day on October 11th, I give my perspective on what it means to come out in the workplace, why it's important and why it's not a singular event but rather something that happens continuously throughout our careers.

I chat with Geographer and Data Scientist Peter Lenz, Head of Data Science at Near, about geo-location data - what is it? How is it used and what are some of the ethical concerns around it? We discuss how it’s collected - from cellphones to Satellites, and we talk about the democratization of space and how accessible it has become for private enterprise to launch satellites. Lastly I get Peter’s perspective on some interesting data-related topics that have been in the news lately.

Fara Ashiru Jituboh, Co-Founder and CEO of Okra, joins me to discuss what it means to build Africa’s financial data network, the social consequences like building and strengthening a middle class. We discuss how they think about the financial data they collect and use for anything from personalization of services to fraud detection all while maintaining privacy and security for their customers.

We also touch on Fara’s experience as a Black Female tech startup founder and hear her one word of advice for anyone embarking on the path of Entrepeneurship.

Lauren S Moores, PhD, Head of Data Innovation at Montai Health joins me to discuss her work on the data advisory board of USA for UNHCR, a nonprofit organization that supports the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and builds awareness and support for the global refugee crisis.

We discuss how data is utilized in that work to help address the Refugee Crisis, her take on corporations doing work for social good, AI and the issue of privacy in health tech, as well as why I won’t be doing the 23 & me thing anytime soon.

James Hodson, CEO and board member of AI FOR GOOD, talks about how the organization defines social good, how Corporations and Academia are hampered in their ability to push social innovation and how AI For Good seeks to fill that void. We discuss a few of their projects, especially around diversity and inclusion in the workplace - quantifying and measuring corporations' adherence to their D&I goals.

Professor Naomi Tague of the UC Santa Barbara Bren School of Environmental Science and Management talks about her research predicting and forecasting forest fire frequency and severity in California as well as modeling how water flows through landscapes, what data is used in the models and how machine learning helps at different points.

Jerelyn Rodriguez is co-founder and CEO of The Knowledge House, an organization created with the purpose of closing the gaps in the education­-to-­employment pipeline by leading digital skills training in coding and design for underserved young people in the Bronx. TKH combines technology training, career support, and a comprehensive network of partners to help disconnected job seekers secure rewarding careers in the tech economy and become financially independent, fostering the next generation of tech and data wranglers.