2023 Azure scholarship banner

Amid a rapidly changing world of work, certification programs from technology companies such as Microsoft are highly relevant. Skilling and upskilling opportunities are key for economic security, career growth, and business development. Women in Cloud is teaming up with Microsoft and Coursera to introduce 250 new scholarships for all learners. WIC and Microsoft’s Azure scholarships will focus on AI and cybersecurity to meet the developing needs of the tech industry. 

 

There are currently 3.4 million cybersecurity jobs that need to be filled across the globe. WIC and Microsoft are aiming to bridge that gap by promoting a free scholarship opportunity and supporting diversity in tech. The scholarship is available to all genders and all regions around the world with an emphasis on supporting women and other marginalized people as they start (or continue) their journey in tech. Current research shows that women only make up approximately 24% of the cybersecurity workforce this underrepresentation increases the labor shortage, and this shortage increases digital threats on companies who do not have a large enough team to deal with adapting cybersecurity threats. 

 

WIC, with input from Microsoft and Coursera, has decided that along with cybersecurity, AI training for the WIC community is essential. This focus is important because of the growing influence of AI. Businesses are looking to automate some processes with AI to help with the talent shortage while also still benefiting their employees. With some basic systems relying on AI, employees would be able to spend more time innovating, training costs and time would be reduced, and future employees from “nontraditional” backgrounds could be more easily identified.   

 

“At Women in Cloud, our mission is to empower every member of our community to build technical, business, and leadership capacity to thrive in the $7 Trillion Cloud and AI Ecosystem,” said Chaitra Vedullapalli, President and Co-Founder of WIC. “This includes expanding access to training and skilling opportunities for women to excel in the ever-changing technology landscape.”

 

The curriculum, provided by Microsoft and Coursera, will begin in July 2023 with Azure AI Fundamentals and will grow to include Microsoft Cybersecurity Analyst Professional Certificate and Microsoft Power BI Developer/Analyst Professional Certificate after they are released on Coursera’s platform in early and late summer 2023. Furthermore, scholarship students can work directly with the WIC team to access any Microsoft specialization or professional certification program available on the Coursera platform. There will be 2,000 Microsoft certification vouchers available for scholarship recipients who complete a full Microsoft specialization or professional certificate through the scholarship program.

Women in Cloud (WIC) and Accenture have joined forces to deliver a groundbreaking B2B coaching program designed specifically for women tech founders. This world-class program aims to help female entrepreneurs break into enterprise opportunities and accelerate their growth in the industry.

 

The program targets B2B tech female founders with a minimum of 2 years in business and at least one successful pilot. Eligible participants must have a SaaS tech solution built on Cloud Hyperscaler infrastructure such as Microsoft Cloud, AWS, or Google Cloud. Plus open to invest in cosell-led GTM activities to capture market share with Accenture and others.

Over six months, participants will commit 14 hours to the program, including 4 hours in meetings and 10+ hours in coaching sessions. They will lead the scheduling of meetings and maintain ongoing communication with Accenture business leaders.

Throughout the program, B2B Women Tech Founders will:

  • Explore industry alignments, product fit, and technology roadmaps.
  • Build relationships with industry leaders.
  • Provide feedback and ideas to improve the program.
  • Attend mandatory kickoff, closing, and check-in sessions led by Women in Cloud and Accenture (max of 3.5 hours over 6 months).

This innovative coaching program pairs female founders with Accenture executives and their customers, offering unparalleled industry-leading support. 

“It’s not every day that we have the opportunity to mentor CEOs of emerging technology companies, and I’m grateful to have met, worked with, and learned from three awesome startup founders during the WIC/Accenture Coaching Program”, said Accenture mentor Greg Reiser, Managing Director of Cloud First Networks. “Anytime someone takes your advice and then comes back to thank you for the impact you’ve made on their business, it’s extremely rewarding.” 

With B2B Women Tech founders strategically matched with Accenture Executives whose expertise aligns with their unique industry experience and business needs, this program is the ultimate tool to take your business to the next level and unlocks access to funding such as Microsoft Partner Capital Fund, Founder First Capital Partners, Chai Angels, Masterfund and others.

The program has already delivered valuable insights to entrepreneurs, with Accenture mentors focusing on refining product-market fit, developing industry partnerships, and finding and acquiring customers. The collaboration also allows Accenture to explore opportunities to adopt emerging technologies and provide strategic co-market and co-sell insights.

“Our time with Lori was extremely valuable. We discussed our purpose, target market, technical options and strategy, and contracting with enterprises”, said participant Andrea Sorenson, CEO & Co-Founder of Liiingo. “Her insights have helped us understand our options, make key decisions, and develop a clearer strategy. Lori asked great questions, understood our challenges, and offered her insights with respect and encouragement.”

Requirements to get engaged:

  • Complete WIC Founder Application which takes 15 to 25 minutes. 
  • Once you are qualified, you will be required to process nominal operational fees of $295. This program will automatically qualify you to participate in #WICxTOP100 Brand Visibility Program.
  • Then, you will be invited to participate in the B2B Coaching Program for 6 months. 

 

To know more about the program visit the B2B Founder Coaching Program Page

Learn about Women in Cloud’s partnership with Accenture and join the movement to empower women in the tech industry.

Women in Cloud (WIC), in partnership with Insight Enterprises, is thrilled to announce the commencement of nominations for the third annual #empowHERaccess 2023 Awards. These prestigious awards aim to acknowledge and celebrate the exceptional achievements and contributions of women, allies, and organizations in the technology industry. Nominations for the 2023 Global Edition of the awards are now open, providing aspiring and established women entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators, and allies an opportunity to showcase their excellence in the following eight categories:

For the past three years, the #empowHERaccess Awards have recognized over 2,500 outstanding individuals and organizations worldwide who have made significant impacts in the technology industry. This esteemed event has become a symbol of empowerment, fostering a sense of community and driving positive change in the tech sector.

 

The #empowHERaccess Awards offer a unique platform for women entrepreneurs, leaders, and allies to be acknowledged for their remarkable achievements and contributions to their communities. Award winners and nominees will have the honor of joining the WIC Awards Hall of Fame, granting them access to connect with like-minded women and gain visibility through the Get Introduced platform. Moreover, award winners will receive a prize package valued at over $1000, including membership to the exclusive #WICxInsiderCircle program.

Jen Vasin, Chief Human Resources Officer at Insight, expressed her enthusiasm about the collaboration, stating, “At Insight, we are dedicated to supporting the success of women in technology through career recruitment, professional development, and mentorship. We are thrilled to partner with Women in Cloud to recognize and celebrate the achievements of women leaders, entrepreneurs, and allies who share our mission to promote responsible, equitable practices in the technology industry through the 2023 #empowHERaccess Awards.”

 

To submit nominations for yourself or someone else for the 2023 #empowHERaccess Awards, please visit this link and complete the application before July 10, 2023. The winners will be unveiled at the awards ceremony on July 20th, which will be a highlight of the #WICxInspire 2023 activities.

 

For further information regarding the #empowHERaccess 2023 Awards and the application process, please reach out to [email protected].

Insight Enterprises (NASDAQ:NSIT), a Fortune 500 Solutions Integrator focused on driving client success through digital transformation, is proud to announce its partnership with Women in Cloud to offer leadership scholarships for women seeking to become Professional Agile Leaders. The partnership is designed to promote gender diversity in IT leadership roles and empower women to become effective leaders in Agile software development.

The leadership scholarships will provide women with access to Professional Agile Leadership Essentials training, which will teach them Scrum fundamentals and how to become effective leaders in Agile software development. The program is designed to help women acquire the skills needed to improve team performance, increase business value, better manage risks, engage stakeholders effectively, and deliver software faster.

The partnership with Women in Cloud is part of Insight’s commitment to promoting gender diversity in the IT industry and empowering women to pursue careers in technology. “We believe that diversity is the key to innovation, success and advancements in technology,” said Andrea Perkins, Vice President, Digital Enablement, Insight. “By partnering with Women in Cloud, we are able to offer leadership scholarships to women seeking to advance their careers in software development and help bridge the gender gap in the field.”

Women in Cloud is a community-led initiative that empowers women to pursue careers in technology and provides them with the resources and support they need to succeed. The organization is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in the IT industry and creating a more equitable and inclusive workplace for women.

“We are thrilled to partner with Insight to offer leadership scholarships for women seeking to become Professional Agile Leaders,” said Chaitra Vedullapalli, co-founder of Women in Cloud. “This partnership is a testament to Insight’s commitment to promoting gender diversity in the IT industry and empowering women to pursue careers in technology. We look forward to working together to create a more equitable and inclusive workplace for women.”

The leadership scholarships are open all genders, ages, and backgrounds who are interested in pursuing a career in software development. Please review available opportunities as some require prior Scrum knowledge. To apply for the scholarship program or to learn more about Insight’s training and consulting services, please visit our WICxInsight page.

 

By now, you have likely experimented with mainstream generative AI, whether it be ChatGPT or Dall-E, and found that it’s impressive, powerful and maybe even overwhelming.

Whether you’re a decision-maker in your organization or are just starting out, you’re likely asking questions about its potential role in your business: Should we dive in head-first or proceed with caution? What are our blind spots? How will we know if we are falling behind? What’s the best way to onboard ourselves and our clients?

When AI meets your customers or workforce

Generative AI has great potential to relieve the tedium in efforts like research and knowledge management, content creation and software development, just to name a few.

One of the most common applications of generative AI is to create highly intelligent conversational agents that are backed by a large knowledge base. For example, a pharmacy wants to provide round-the-clock ChatGPT service for their customers by allowing them to have a conversation about their symptoms, current medications and health context using common language, just as they would speak to their family physician.

An application like this raises important questions: What if the AI is wrong and gives bad advice? What if the AI leaks the wrong data to a patient and violates HIPAA policy? Will there even be a need for pharmacists and telemedicine in the future?

 To gain control over the possibility of AI running wild, we should understand the realistic threats and probable opportunities of generative AI.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard several leaders say, “If you learn to use AI, you’re less likely to be left behind.”

Those of us in technology are accountable for keeping our skills relevant, and we’re constantly evaluating the benefits — and the opportunity cost — of mastering new technology like ChatGPT for problem solving and Codex for speedier development. However, there is widespread concern that innovation like generative AI will rapidly displace human effort across all industries, resulting in major changes to the labor market, all because of the latest release of powerful AI models to mainstream.

On a positive note, generative AI could be a catalyst for better workforce operations and accessibility. A use case we’ve explored recently at Insight is being able to use AI speech generation for more accurate multilingual translation. There are similar uses for enablement of individuals with speech, auditory or visual disabilities.

Transparency, explicability and data security

Generative AI didn’t arrive on the scene with a well-defined set of guardrails. As disruptive as our creations can be, humans also are capable of skillful stewardship of our inventions — we’ve been doing it for centuries. If opportunities to tune acceptable-use policies are identified early, and if those policies are implemented quickly, generative AI could be a net positive. But first, we need to learn how it works.

The more we understand how AI systems work, the more confident we can use AI without fear. Generative transformers like ChatGPT have been trained on the internet’s massive public corpora. This means that all sources of information (including false information and opinions) can influence AIs’ responses to some degree.

The mainstream AI systems come with no guarantee that responses will be factual. You can think of generative AI model as that friend who believes everything they read on the internet — sometimes helpful and usually entertaining but take what it says with a grain of salt.

AI users should verify before trusting output and challenge AI recommendations. We typically challenge recommendations from our friends, family, financial advisors and real estate agents: When a recommendation doesn’t quite add up, we ask why.

So, what’s the problem with asking why an AI system produced an odd or unexpected response? The problem is that AI systems are notoriously difficult to explain because of the advanced mathematics “under the hood.” At Insight, we are leaning into Explainable AI (XAI) to help us connect our clients to their AI systems. XAI is an emerging related discipline of responsible AI that focuses on developing tools to use common language to explain the real-world relationships between sophisticated algorithms and their outputs.

In addition to explicability, our clients are interested in data security, specifically retention policies of prompts — the user inputs to the AI system. Businesses are quickly discovering how vulnerable their employees may be to the temptation of exposing sensitive information to a public endpoint. As businesses look to alternatives like secure-deployments ChatGPT, they are looking to partners like Insight to help them navigate the security and implementation challenges and define data retention needs.

Is this the end of creativity?

We can now use the image generation model DALL-E to generate visual content for artistic motivations, marketing copy or product design.

While this new capability raises plenty of understandable questions about creative property and market impact, using technology to enhance or expedite creativity is not new at all. Today, some of us use iPads to create art with a stylus. Before the era of digital art, artists endured all sorts of “analog challenges,” including purchasing paint and paintbrushes, managing humidity and light, and coordinating transportation for sales and gallery shows (instead of listing online).

The beauty of innovation is that it often creates space for variety: Oil painting didn’t disappear when the tablet was introduced, and AI art doesn’t have to eclipse intrinsically valued human-crafted art.

No matter your industry, you may soon be using generative AI to visualize and diagram important meetings, collaboration and thought processes. Wouldn’t it be nice if, as someone was speaking, there was a diagram or framework so that you could see the thoughts visually represented? Creative conversations about a product design or complicated explanations of a process flow will be dynamically visualized without having a PowerPoint or Visio artist in the background, sorting out the details.

Whether you are concerned about impact to workforce, security and transparency — or on the purely human side … creativity — my hope is that you approach AI advancements with caution and thoughtfulness instead of fear. This early in the introduction of generative AI, many of us will find that leaders are open to influence like they never have been before in this new territory. For each warning sign ahead, there is a matching beneficial use case to be built.

What will you build with generative AI and how will you usher it into adoption responsibly?

No alt text provided for this image

This article is authored by Meagan Gentry, National AI Practice Manager at Insight. Meagan Gentry is national AI practice manager at Insight Enterprises, a Fortune 500 Solutions Integrator helping organizations accelerate digital transformation and navigate the complexities of technology choices spanning cloud, data, AI, the intelligent edge and cybersecurity. Meagan’s AI team specializes in delivering end-to-end data science and machine learning solutions to clients, including acceleration of AI centers of excellence, MLOps and more.

Wondering how to get started with ChatGPT?

We are inviting you an exciting opportunity to be part of #WICxCloudCXOSeries to learn from experienced leaders and gain new insights about Business Applications of Generative AI.

The CXO Series for Business Applications of Generative AI is a collection of insights, resources, tools, and insights designed to help business leaders understand and leverage generative AI technologies in their organizations. The series is focused on the CXO level, including CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, Women Professionals and Founders who are responsible for setting strategic direction and driving digital transformation initiatives.

No alt text provided for this image

The series covers a range of topics related to generative AI, including:

  1. An overview of generative AI technologies and their business applications
  2. Best practices for implementing generative AI in mid market and enterprise settings
  3. Case studies and examples of successful generative AI projects
  4. Strategies for managing the ethical and social implications of generative AI
  5. Practical advice for building and leading generative AI teams
  6. Insights into emerging trends and future developments in generative AI

Overall, the CXO Series for Business Applications of Generative AI is designed to help business leaders stay ahead of the curve and leverage the power of generative AI to drive innovation, create new business models, and deliver value to customers.

Register here