Women in Data Science Worldwide

Highlights
Google’s new Agent Development Kit (ADK) (3:16)
Getting production agents ready (8:33)
Taking risks in career (11:10)
Balancing life (13:22)
How being a WiDS Ambassador impacted Shir’s career (19:31)
Bio
Shir Meir Lador leads a team evangelizing applied AI at Google cloud. Previously, she worked as the AI group Manager of the Document Intelligence Group at Intuit, where she led teams in developing AI services that helped consumers and small businesses prosper. Prior to intuit, she
worked at 2 Israeli startups as a data scientist and researcher.
A recognized leader in AI and data science, Shir is a former WiDS Tel Aviv Ambassador, co-founder and organizer of PyData Tel Aviv, and co-host of Unsupervised, a podcast exploring the latest in data science. She frequently speaks at international AI and data science conferences, sharing insights on applied machine learning and AI innovation.
Shir holds an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computers from Ben-Gurion University, specializing in machine learning and signal processing. Passionate about fostering inclusive data science communities, she actively contributes to initiatives that bridge AI research and business impact.
 
Links and Resources
Google Developer Workshop
 
Connect with Shir
Shir Meir Lador on Linkedin, Medium, and X
 
Connect with Us
Shelly Darnutzer on LinkedIn
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Highlights
Time at Mathworks (17:27)
Being a team leader (18:52)
Staying in touch with the technical side (20:04)
Advice (27:07)
Bio
Sohini Sarkar is a Principal Product Manager and a Senior Team Lead at MathWorks. Her career started with earning a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and then working on DOE and EPA projects as a postdoctoral researcher. She has held various positions at Dassault Systèmes, ranging from a solution consultant to a market and competitive intelligence analyst, concurrently earning her MBA. Currently at MathWorks, Sohini focuses on established areas such as Math, Statistics, Optimization, and Machine Learning, to more emerging technologies such as Quantum Computing, Large Language Modeling and Generative AI, as well as Scientific Machine Learning.
Connect with Sohini
Sohini Sarkar on Linkedin
Connect with Us
Chisoo Lyons on LinkedIn
Follow WiDS on LinkedIn (@Women in Data Science (WiDS) Worldwide), Twitter (@WiDS_Worldwide), Facebook (WiDSWorldwide), and Instagram (wids_worldwide)
Listen and Subscribe to the WiDS Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher

Predictive Modeling (4:15) 
Human judgement and processes (14:06)
Imperfection in models (21:40)
Bio
Claudia Perlich is Managing Director and Head of Strategic Data Science for Investment Management at Two Sigma, where she has worked for seven years. In this role, Claudia is responsible for developing innovative alpha strategies at the intersection of alternative data, thematic hypotheses and machine learning in public markets. Claudia joined Two Sigma from Dstillery, an AI ad targeting company, where she worked as Chief Scientist. Claudia began her career in data science at the IBM Watson Research Center, concentrating on research in data analytics and machine learning for complex real-world domains and applications.
Since 2011, Claudia has served as an adjunct professor teaching Data Mining in the M.B.A. program at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Claudia received a Ph.D. in Information Systems from Stern School of Business, New York University, holds an M.S. of Computer Science from Colorado University and a B.S. in Computer Science from Technical University Darmstadt, Germany.
 
Connect with Claudia
Claudia Perlich on Linkedin
Connect with Us
Margot Gerritsen on LinkedIn
Follow WiDS on LinkedIn (@Women in Data Science (WiDS) Worldwide), Twitter (@WiDS_Worldwide), Facebook (WiDSWorldwide), and Instagram (wids_worldwide)
Listen and Subscribe to the WiDS Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher

Highlights
Vulnerability and honesty in leadership (12:07)
Finding leaders who are willing to take risks on talent (13:48)
Bio
Maritza is an engineering manager at Klaviyo, where she leads a team focused on creating tools that help marketers better understand and optimize their campaign and flow performance. She enjoys collaborating with her team to develop solutions that provide clear, actionable insights for users.
Before joining Klaviyo, Maritza worked at startups in the clinical trial management and natural language processing (NLP) sectors, where she gained experience in applying software to solve practical challenges. She began her career as a research assistant in a computational neuroimaging lab, where she was introduced to software development through the lab's open-source projects. This experience sparked her interest in using technology to address real-world problems.
Outside of work, Maritza enjoys knitting, though much of her time is happily spent caring for her 1- and 3-year-olds.
 
Connecting with Maritza
Maritza Ebling on Linkedin
 
Connect with Us
Tina Tang on LinkedIn
Follow WiDS on LinkedIn (@Women in Data Science (WiDS) Worldwide), Twitter (@WiDS_Worldwide), Facebook (WiDSWorldwide), and Instagram (wids_worldwide)
Listen and Subscribe to the WiDS Podcast on
 Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher

Math and Computer Science (2:51)
Graph Alignment (20:38)
 
Bio
Huda Nassar is a senior computer scientist at RelationalAI working on building the graph algorithms library offered as part of RelationalAI's product. Previously, Huda obtained a PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University and was a postdoc fellow at Stanford's School of Medicine. Huda is also known for her "Julia for Data Science" course which had over 13,000 students and focused on Data Science methods including graph analytics.
 
Connect with Huda
Huda Nassar on Linkedin
Connect with Us
Margot Gerritsen on LinkedIn 
Follow WiDS on LinkedIn (@Women in Data Science (WiDS) Worldwide), Twitter (@WiDS_Worldwide), Facebook (WiDSWorldwide), and Instagram (wids_worldwide)
Listen and Subscribe to the WiDS Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher