Girls In AI

About Elena Sinel, CEO Acorn Aspirations and Co-Founder Teens In AI: Having spent 10 years travelling, volunteering and working in some of the most deprived places in the world - Uzbekistan, where she grew up, the Balkans, Ethiopia and Bangladesh, Elena has seen the power of entrepreneurship when fused with education and technology. 

Elena Acorn Aspirations is an education social enterprise in 2015. Through the Teens In AI initiative launched at the UN AI for Good Summit Geneva 2018, Elena aims to inspire young people aged 11-19 to use AI and entrepreneurship for social good. 

Elena is a multi-award winning social entrepreneur, sought after keynote speaker (UN, EU, CogX and other conferences) and is passionate about making a difference in young women's lives. Her latest two awards in Mobile World Congress for Leadership and Diversity are testimony to this. https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/gsma-announces-winners-of-the-2020-glomo-awards/ Her short bio can be viewed here.

Problem: The AI and data science fields are overwhelmingly white and male. According to AI Now Institute, more than 80% of AI professors are men, and only 15% of AI researchers at Facebook and 10% of AI researchers at Google are women. The makeup of the AI field is reflective of “a larger problem across computer science, with women comprising only 24% of the field of computer science in 2015”, according to the National Science Board.

Solution: Online platform connecting teenage girls aspiring to become the next generation of technologists to tech professionals to work on high-impact tech projects. Young women benefit from mentoring and apprenticeship opportunities posted on our platform by corporates.

Impact: Our platform will address the problem of diversity and inclusion head on. It will create opportunities for young women to learn the skills required by the industry.

A diversity shortage in STEM continues to plague economies globally, potentially costing $680bn to the EU alone by 2050 if current trends continue (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2017). With developments in fields such as artificial intelligence and data science radically transforming the world, a pressing challenge faced by the education sector preparing female students for a workplace requiring an understanding/appreciation of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science.

With an estimated rise between 5.3-24.7m in global unemployment (UN Report on Youth & Covid-19/March 2020), the impact on youth employment is likely to be severe given that youth, particularly young women (15-24 years), are already 3x more likely to be unemployed than adults. Closing gender gaps in STEM education would have a positive impact on future employment opportunities for young women.

As COVID-19 forces school closures in 185 countries, Plan International and UNESCO warn of the potential for increased drop-out rates which will disproportionately affect adolescent girls, further entrenching gender gaps in education. Many young women also struggle with their mental health due to isolation. Our platform offers a way to keep young women engaged with the online community of peers and mentors, whilst also upskilling them with industry-relevant skills.

Product:

An online platform connecting teenage girls aspiring to be the next generation of technologists and entrepreneurs to tech professionals to work on high-impact stechnology projects addressing UN SDGs. Aspiring technologists will benefit from mentoring/work/learning opportunities provided by our corporate partners contributing employee volunteering time.

Delivery:

We plan to layer the project on top of our existing hackathon model. These hackathons equip young women with the skills to rapidly develop technological solutions addressing local and global challenges.

Corporates will identify relevant projects that match their organisation's objectives and/or their employees' skills.

Our platform will:

* Showcase projects (already built)

* Organise/plan a company's employee volunteering program

* Collaboration tools: project planning, file storage, code repository, safe chatroom

* Smart impact and engagement dashboard, analytics and corporate social responsibility reporting.

Unique Approach:

Over the past 5 years, we have pioneered an industry-relevant pedagogy/project-based learning through hackathons, incubators and workshops for young people. We have built a large and active community of young people across the globe and strong ties to industry partners including Mastercard, Microsoft, QuantumBlack and Avanade. We have a strong track record of empowering young people with our alumni progressing to roles in organisations such as Microsoft and Accenture.

Our solution serves two main stakeholders:

1. Young women aged 12-18 looking for remote career-enhancing opportunities:  

We have a strong, engaged community of young women of whom at least 50% come from minority ethnic/underprivileged/low income backgrounds.

Impact:

Our alumni have won experiences with institutions (Nesta, Mastercard, Element AI), developed the confidence to speak at international conferences (BBC, CogX, UN, EU), have been offered apprenticeship roles in corporates (Microsoft, Accenture) and have gone on to study Computer Science at Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh University and Imperial College.

2. Global corporate partners looking to engage employees, recruit and create social impact:

Corporates partner with us on our youth programs in markets of strategic importance to their respective business operations by offering mentors, inspirational speakers, judges and work experience opportunities and by running workshops in AI, ML, data science and Ethics.

Impact:

* Employee engagement/professional development

* Talent pipelines

* Brand visibility

* Social Impact

Our online platform will enable collaborative project-based learning for aspiring female technologists aided through skills-based volunteering/ mentoring on the part of industry leaders. The main area of focus is enabling career opportunities for young women and addressing the technology skills gap, which has economic benefits short, medium and long-term.

There is a staggering gender gap in the representation of women within the Computer Science field, comprising only 18% females. Even more concerning is that within AI, female representation stands at only 12% (WIRED). In fact, the proportion of AI papers co-authored by at least one woman has not, in relative terms, improved since the 1990s (Nesta). 

We develop the talent pipeline by offering young teenage girls opportunities to learn about cutting-edge technologies and get mentored by industry leaders through work placements and apprenticeships. The majority of the girls in our community come from underprivileged or minority ethnic backgrounds.

Back in 2015 as my daughter just entered a British secondary school system, I realised there were significant failures within the system that has not changed in more than 200 years. I felt my daughter was not taught the skills that will help her get a good job. The kind of skills I felt that would benefit her were communications, team work, project-based learning, technology and entrepreneurship skills. I launched the first hackathon for teens back in 2015 and since then have inspired more than 5000 children into tech4good. Since 2018, having launched Teens In AI, we have been exploring the idea of developing a platform to connect our widespread network of young alumni with our network of mentors/ role models from the tech and business community.

In early 2020, our team of three further defined the blueprint of the corporate mentoring platform and outlined the underlying technological frameworks. 

Our platform takes the form of a website built using industry standard frameworks: www.girlsinai.co.uk

This project is a digital extension of our in-person pedagogy which has been highly successful, with alumni going on to study STEM subjects at top universities or taking up employment at firms such as Microsoft or Accenture.   

I am extremely passionate about empowering young people to change the world around them by helping unleash their agency. Having seen how opportunities created for the less privileges and underrepresented can transform life, I see myself creating more such opportunities for those who need it the most: young people from low-income families across the globe and  young women. 

Prior to this, I worked as international specialist consultant with 9 years of experience in poverty reduction strategies, rural livelihood development and poverty alleviation in Central Asia, Balkans, Ethiopia and Bangladesh where I worked in international organisations like British Council, UNDP and World Bank. My experience living and working abroad shaped my understanding of the intrinsic problems that humanity faces and the ability for entrepreneurship to rehabilitate and transform societies. 

I started my company because at the time when my daughter Victoria (now 16) entered secondary school, I realised children were still being taught by methods set up for factory workers some 200 years ago. To date. I have inspired more than 5000 young people into creating tech for social or environmental good and having just partnered with Microsoft, our Girls in AI initiative will now be scaled across 150 countries.

Our project team expertise lies in technology, entrepreneurship and business. We have the track record, capacity and capability to deliver the project successfully and on time despite working restrictions of Covid-19. We are able to take on developers on a contract basis to ensure we are able to build and deploy the digital platform.

The team and roles:

• Elena Sinel, CEO Acorn Aspirations and Co-Founder Teens In AI: Having spent 10 years travelling, volunteering and working in some of the most deprived places in the world - Uzbekistan, where she grew up, the Balkans, Ethiopia and Bangladesh, Elena has seen the power of entrepreneurship when fused with education and technology. Elena will oversee overall project management for the platform. Elena is a multi-award winning social entrepreneur, sought after keynote speaker (UN, EU, CogX and other conferences) and is passionate about making a difference in young women's lives. Her latest two awards in Mobile World Congress for Leadership and Diversity are testimony to this. https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/gsma-announces-winners-of-the-2020-glomo-awards/ Her short bio can be viewed here.

• Peter He, Co-founder, Tech-Lead, Teens In AI: Peter will supervise development, set up technical infrastructure, translate partners' and community feedback into technical specifications. 

• Ayesha Silveira, Partnerships Director, Acorn Aspirations: Ayesha will handle legal and commercial aspects of the project and manage relationships with partners 

• Harvinder Bhogal, Marketing Lead: Harvinder specialises in digital marketing and will oversee the promotion and marketing campaign for our platform

• Rah Kapoor, Developer, External Contractor: The majority of development work will be undertaken by Rahat.

When COVID19 broke, I was concerned, as any founder would, about the future of our company. We depend on the corporate partnerships and found very quickly that the budgets we rely on are the first ones that get cut. As we organise face-to-face projects, we also had to find a way to go digital.

We immediately moved to B2C model and created opportunities for individuals and sponsors to create scholarships instead, which was much easier for our corpoates to support. We also pivoted to run digital hackathons and the latest one #YouthvsCOVID (https://www.teensinai.com/covid-19-hackathon/) had over 250 young people from across the world participate with BBC featuring one of the team's journey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar0ux-_lVLI

As a CEO and Founder I strive to be the best as I can possibly be to drive the company forward amidst all challenges we are thrown at. I am very fortunate to have the job that defines my life purpose: to inspire young people across the world to uncover their potential to change the world for the better. A lot of young people I mentor look up to me when they create their own ventures and I do my absolute best to support them on their journeys. Leading is what I do daily and developing future leaders and change-makers is part of the my venture's DNA, it's that WHAT and the WHY.

Founded in 2015, Acorn Aspirations is a multi-award winning social enterprise. The company launched the Teens In AI initiative at UN AI for Good Summit in May 2018 to inspire and equip more young people aged 12-18 years to use AI and entrepreneurship for social good. Enhancing diversity and inclusion in tech (gender, income, ethnicity) in a way that empowers underrepresented groups is fundamental to the way we operate.   

Product:

Online platform connecting teenage girls aspiring to be the next generation of technologists and entrepreneurs to tech professionals to work on high-impact tech projects. Young women will benefit from mentoring and work/learning opportunities provided by our existing corporate partners who will contribute employee volunteering time.

We plan to offer the platform in addition to our existing hackathon model. These hackathons equip young women with the skills to rapidly develop technological solutions to issues in local and global communities.

 How we differ: 

• Education Space: Over the past 5 years, we have pioneered an industry-relevant project-based pedagogy through hackathons, incubators and workshops for young women. Most extra-curricular/ after school programmes focus mainly on coding (e.g. codeclub.org), app design and development (apps for good). Our holistic industry-relevant framework encompasses design thinking, business/ marketing, exposure to AI/ML/data science and ethics - all key to the responsible development of AI. 
• Corporate Mentoring Space: We will have corporates identify relevant projects that match their organisation's objectives and/or employee skill-sets. We have built a large and active community of young people across the world and strong ties to industry partners including Mastercard, Microsoft, QuantumBlack and Avanade. We have a strong track record of empowering young women within our alumni progressing to roles in organisations such as Microsoft and Accenture. We differ from competitors like guider-ai which aims instead to connect mentors and mentees within the same organisation. Our platform encourages external mentoring and coaching of young women as well developing employees’ mentoring skills, learning and development.

Resources/ input: we are an experienced team with relevant skills in product development, technology and business; external developers; access to networks and partner ecosystem for funding, mentors, access to useful networks, datasets

Primary activities: curriculum development (AI, entrepreneurship, ethics); curriculum delivery through hackathons, bootcamps, accelerator programmes; high-impact projects developed by young people; coordinating opportunities for young people e.g. mentorships, internships, work experience, access to industry events/ panel discussions; employee engagement/volunteering/mentoring programs organised for corporate partners

Immediate outputs: our aspiring female technologists acquire industry relevant skills, develop a higher level of self-confidence and self-esteem, soft and hard skills, and secure access to career opportunities in the thriving tech sector, particularly careers in AI and data science.To date, 5000+ young people across the globe have enrolled in our programmes. Of these students, over 50% are young women, many of whom have gone on to study Computer Science at prestigious universities and some have secured internships at global tech giants like Microsoft, Accenture and Goldman Sachs.

Intermediate outcomes: more young women studying STEM subjects and going on to pursue research and technology careers. Some of our older alumni return to mentor current members of our community. They often serve as role models, and bring in opportunities from their respective employment and/or institutions. Technology breaks down geographical barriers and will offer opportunities for young women across the world to connect through passion for tech for good and peer-to-peer mentoring.

Our long-term impact: we aim to level the playing field for young girls by offering them opportunities to effectively transition from education to employment in the tech sector, which will further improve gender representation of women in STEM. Young girls who have been empowered with access/industry-relevant skills serve as role models, in itself resulting in a virtuous cycle of more women going into STEM. Long-term, this will have an impact on diversity in tech and have further benefits on the global economy. McKinsey’s latest report “Diversity Still Matters” (2020) makes a strong case for the importance of diversity for business, and it being critical for the economy’s recovery in the post-pandemic world. 

Our flagships programs in the last five years alone have impacted 5000 young people, of which at least 50% are young women

We currently have 1500  corporate employees in our network who benefit from mentoring young people

In one year the number of young people, particularly women, we will impact will grow to 20,000. The number of employees we will engage will go up to 6,000. This is due to positive conversations we are holding with corporates like Microsoft, Avanade, Mastercard and Visa who support our operations in the UK, Europe and Africa.

In 5 years, we aim to scale our operations to 150 countries (already in process with Microsoft) and impact millions of young people. particularly young women in harder to reach countries of Africa and South East and Central Asia. The technology we are building right now will allow us to do this at scale. 

• Our goal within the next year is to develop the technological infrastructure/ platform to enable more young women across the globe to benefit from access to corporate mentoring, apprenticeships and work placements in the tech sector, specifically AI and data science. In this way, we will be able to scale the benefits we have seen within our existing community. After we build the platform, testing and refining will continue to be our primary focus.
• As we increase the number of young female technologists/entrepreneurs on our platform, we will also strengthen and grow our partner ecosystem to provide opportunities to young girls around the world, particularly in less developed countries. 
• At the same time, corporates who engage with us will see the new talent they acquire through our platform transform their company culture and benefit those companies long-term. In 5 years will will see a much more diverse workforce across companies who invest into diversity and inclusion and engage their employees in mentoring young women.
• Our goal is to ensure every girl in every country across the world understands the opportunities STEM will offer to her and enable every girl to reach her full potential. Whereas now there are less than 20% women in the tech sector, we aim to raise this number to at least 50%, thus leveling the playing field through opportunities that will open to the young women. Not only this, we ensure that the young women we impact come from BAME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) backgrounds.

• FINANCIAL: Delivering a high standard of service, resources and mentoring to our community proves quite expensive.  A large proportion of the women we work with are underprivileged and unable to cover the full cost - hence our team works with corporate partners who fund our activities. However, access to partner funding will prove to be a constraint in the COVID economic recession. One of the first budgets that corporates tend to restrict is diversity and inclusion as well as CSR. This is the reason why we would like to move our operation into the digital realm, i.e. to reduce our operations and stuffing costs and grow at scale.
• ECONOMIC/ PANDEMIC: The economic recession due to COVID means that there are fewer work opportunities out there for everyone, especially women. Furthermore, the need for social distancing and remote work/education limits opportunity. Women are far more affected by this than men are.
• CULTURAL: The tech sector deters young women to enter due to a strong misconception that math and computer science is a male-dominated space. Furthermore, sexism and racism in the workplace are not uncommon.

FINANCIAL: Women from underprivileged backgrounds do not have the access to role models, mentors and employment opportunities necessary for social mobility.  Their families cannot afford expensive coding schools or industry events for networking. When corporates sponsor our programmes, we are able to offer young women free access to our programmes. They are equipped with skills to develop high-impact technology projects. Our platform then enables us to match these young women and their projects with relevant industry mentors. Where corporate funding falls short, our business model requires young people from private schools to pay, so that those from less privileged backgrounds can participate for free. By acquiring industry-relevant tech skills which are in high demand globally, our alumni are able to secure employment opportunities.

ECONOMIC/ PANDEMIC: The economic recession is hastening digital transformation across the world. Our programme and platform is intended to support enterprising young women in a way that enables them to pursue an education and work in the technology space. These pathways are proving to be pandemic-resistant. We have taken steps to move our events online with great success - our pilot 2-week event was a hit with 94.9% of participants expressing interest in future online events.

CULTURAL: Our alumni serve as inspirational role-models for current members of our community and often offer mentorship to help them take the first steps into the world of tech.

We currently partner with various stakeholders for our work:

We work with Corporates: We are aiming to provide young women with a platform to channel their energies constructively, and are connecting them with corporate employees who are keen to volunteer their time for mentoring, delivering inspiring talks and hosting workshops. Corporate partners include QuantumBlack, Avanade, Mastercard, Microsoft, BBC, CogX, JP Morgan, offering varying levels of support. More corporates see the benefit of working with us to source talent differently and more intelligently.

Our latest partnership with Microsoft will see Girls in AI (Alice Envisions The Future DigiGirlz AI) scale across 150 countries through Microsoft's employee engagement programs. 

We work with Governments and Charities: In 2020-21 we have been commissioned by the Brunei Government to inspire young people (male and female) in 170 schools, as well as have partnered with NGOs and charities the likes of Raleigh International to inspire young people (male and female) aged 18-25 in Tanzania, Costa Rica and Nepal (in partnership with Dell Technologies).

We work with schools: This year marks our foray into schools; we plan to collaborate with private/ state school teachers to develop and pilot a brand new inter-disciplinary AI/ data science curriculum/ framework with real world/ industry relevance in select schools in London.

We consult on curriculum: We will continue to consult corporates and governments as knowledge partners on cutting-edge ‘Tech for Good’ educational curriculum.

For our platform however, we plan to partner with corporates to start with.

Key resources/team: We are a small lean team with expertise in technology, entrepreneurship and business. We have the track-record, capacity and capability to deliver the project on time during and despite the working restrictions of COVID-19.

Product/activities: Online platform connecting teenage girls aspiring to become future technologists to tech professionals to work on high-impact technology projects. Young women will benefit from mentoring and work/learning opportunities provided by our existing corporate partners who will contribute by way of employee volunteering time.

Beneficiaries: Our platform will give young female technologists aged 12-18 an opportunity to learn cutting-edge technology and skills required by industry. It will also engage corporates' employees into purposeful skills-based volunteering and enable corporates to recruit talented young women, thus improving diversity in tech.

Customers/Partners: Many organizations will need to improve their talent pipelines, especially female representation in tech jobs post-COVID-19.

Route to market/channel:

• Our alumni community has 5000+ youth based across the world looking for remote career-enhancing opportunities due to COVID-19

• Our corporate partner networks collaborate with us on our flagship events or commission us to host bespoke hackathon events in markets of strategic importance to their respective business operations.

Costs: Comprises labour (for project management, managing partner networks, legal/finance/contract negotiation, marketing); materials (purchase AWS/other tools for platform development) and subcontracting costs (technical consulting and online platform development).

Revenue expectation: Once the platform is built and as we already have a first few corporate partners interested to trial, it should be able to fund itself through organic sales/income.

We are revenue generating and have never had to raise from angels or VCs. We are growing organically and are proud of it.

Funding options we are considering: We plan to bring in money to fund our work by applying for grants from governments and philanthropies and selling our product offering to existing/ new corporate partners. 

How this project will add value to our existing business: Our platform enables us to build a tech interface between corporates and aspiring young female technologists/ entrepreneurs. This will provide us with additional revenue streams by charging corporates for using our platform to recruit from our talent pool and to organise employee engagement programs. 

How we will deliver outcomes and impact beyond the life of the project: The platform will be built as an MVP. Once we have the first corporate partners signed up, it will be able to fund itself through organic sales.

Wider support we may need: We are constantly looking for like-minded global partners in industry, academia and government support. 

Organic Sales/Revenues for the period 2019-20: $256,000 USD 

This includes corporate employee engagement programs, cash awards, government and charity contracts. 

• We continue to engage existing and reach new corporate partners to support our work both financially and in-kind. Our work is mainly funded through organic sales. To date, our work has been financially supported by tech giants like Mastercard, Microsoft, JPMorgan, Avanade, QuantumBlack who are aligned in our mission to ensure more young women are represented in tech.
• We actively apply to relevant government and foundation grants as well.

Project Cost breakdown for 6 months

Labour: $38,530

Materials: Purchase of AWS infrastructure: $6025

Subcontracting costs: $6275

Total cost: $50,830

We are very excited to apply as Solver and are looking to MIT Solve to:

• Receive access to vital seed funding to cover the cost of technology, in-house staff and external consultants for our platform
• Join a supportive community of peers, funders, and experts to help advance our innovative work through Solve's nine-month program
• Access to MIT Solve's community of experts and networks who are doing similar work to exchange advice, support and learning. We are keen to meet with potential partners who will help us expand into new markets and connect us with corporates, governments and philanthropic organisations. 
• We are applying to Solve because we would greatly benefit from assistance to validate the impact we are achieving.  
• We strongly believe with Solve's help we will be able to make a difference in STEM and engage millions of young girls across the globe to upskill in digital and other industry relevant skills to help them transition from education to employment

• We would like to partner with MIT to support our curriculum development and ensure continued industry-relevance. 
• We are also keen to partner with tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Nvidia, Amgen, Merck, Merrill Lynch, Ford, Dupont, Microsoft, AstraZeneca, Verizon and HP to secure mentors, inspirational speakers, internships and an employment pipeline for our young aspiring female technologists. 
• Many of our young female alumni are actively pursuing a career in research and would benefit greatly from research opportunities and scholarships 
• We would benefit greatly from connections to Foundations, family offices and philanthropic institutions that are strategically aligned to our mission of improving the representation of young women in tech.
• We seek to evaluate and validate our impact and scale our operations across other parts of the world, particularly African countries where women have little access to opportunities to learn from industry leaders and explore careers in tech.

• We would like to partner with MIT to support our curriculum development and ensure continued industry-relevance. 
• We are also keen to partner with tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Nvidia, Amgen, Merck, Merrill Lynch, Ford, Dupont, Microsoft, AstraZeneca, Verizon and HP to secure mentors, inspirational speakers, internships and an employment pipeline for our young aspiring female technologists. 
• Many of our young female alumni are actively pursuing a career in research and would benefit greatly from research opportunities and scholarships 
• We would benefit greatly from connections to Foundations, family offices and philanthropic institutions that are strategically aligned to our mission of improving the representation of young women in tech.
• We seek to evaluate and validate our impact and scale our operations across other parts of the world, particularly African countries where women have little access to opportunities to learn from industry leaders and explore careers in tech.