Government should formalize process of mentorship from young age: Nibedita Dutta

Nibedita Dutta was recently declared the winner of the Icertis all-women Data Science Hackathon on how technology can transform gender diversity compliance at corporates

Dutta, a consultant at Absolutdata Analytics, an IT firm specializing in AI/ML solutions, pinpointed a specific SEC filing called the DEF14A SEC filing, which has the names of all the directors on the board. These names she extracted using a Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique.

Once extracted, the final bit involved determining the gender of the directors from their names using Machine Learning. What made her solution stand out is that she chose companies from different industries, revenue sizes and employee counts, and used her solution to identify gender diversity patterns, from a company and industry perspective, over the years..

Here, she talks about how the solution can be used by the governing and regulatory bodies. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: How can your solution be upscaled and used by governing and regulatory bodies to track and ensure gender diversity compliance?

Nibedita Dutta: The potential of the solution to be upscaled and put into real-time use by governing and regulatory bodies is what truly excites me. To accomplish this, we would need a backend database containing the names of the directors of the board and the chief executives of different companies. For my solution, I leveraged the filings of some publicly traded US companies available with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The solution is flexible and can encompass a larger database of companies, depending upon the need. An annual or quarterly refresh can then help capture changes in the gender diversity of companies. The solution comes with a dashboard that can help governing bodies monitor and interpret these changes over a period of time.

DQ: How can governments and corporates encourage more women to select STEM subjects?

Nibedita Dutta: Governments and corporates can start by creating more awareness. Counselling parents and school children on the variety of careers available to a woman via STEM, the potentially high career growth, and real-life success stories can help light a fire in the minds of young girls. Corporate houses, supported by the Government, can organize seminars where young girls get to experience the power of science first-hand.

To ensure that women stick to their promising careers in STEM, the government can look at formalizing the process of mentorship from a young age. Mentorship not only bridges the knowledge gap, but also helps in improving existing skills through the feedback mechanism.

DQ: What are the small steps corporates and governments can take to foster more inclusive workplaces?

Nibedita Dutta: To promote more inclusive workplaces, companies must ensure that inclusion is a core value. To track its progress as an inclusive organization, it is key to put in place a system that ensures it stays on course and follows practices that in no way stray from or dilute the original value of inclusion.

Also, the biological clock for a woman doesn’t tick in tandem with her career clock. Companies need to bring in policies that ensure a woman can fulfill her professional ambitions without compromising on her personal aspirations.

Companies must encourage a culture in which the voices and the opinions of women are not just heard but valued. A culture that respects and cherishes diversity can help move the needle.

DQ: What advice would you like to give to aspiring data scientists/or similar roles?

Nibedita Dutta: I strongly believe in the concept of lifelong learning and more so, considering the times we are living in. The good thing about data science is the number of free resources one can avail to learn it. Be it online courses, hackathons, or blogs - one can tap different resources to keep learning new concepts.

Data science hackathons, like the one Icertis sponsored, provide a unique way for people to network and collaborate with their data scientist peers. It’s a very fulfilling way of working on real data that is usually unclean and dirty. The networking opportunities, coupled with the experience of building sellable skills that companies look for, make hackathons a must for aspiring data scientists.