Women in data hack for gender equality at HACK4Ladies Berlin

On November 15. & 16. 2018, Telekom hosted a women-only hackathon at the hub:raum in Berlin. The event was supported by Udacity, IBM, T-Labs, hub:raum, Telekom Open Spaces and Tableau. Initiated by Kenza Ait Si Abbou Lyadini and organized by 20+ members of the Women@Telekom network, the event welcomed 91 attendants out of a much larger number of applicants—all working or studying in the fields of AI, machine learning, data science, and programming.

Participants worked in teams of six, each with the support of a mentor. The groups had the choice to work on one of three challenges during the hackathon: future of mobility, social media, and diversity. I was onsite to help the teams solve these challenges with Tableau. The team voted most creative by the jury won a copy of The Big Book of Dashboards.

The winning team came up with a project idea for de-gendering applicant resumes. This would enable hiring managers to make gender neutral decisions about selecting candidates for job interviews.

We were happy to be a part of this fantastic opportunity to promote more women into technical fields and to help create a more diverse workforce of the future.