Virtual, Tuesday, February 21, 2023 @ 7 p.m.

How do computers learn to solve problems, make decisions and even improve themselves? Join us for this short virtual workshop and find out! The Vision 1948 Team will help us understand Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and why women need to be equitably represented in the A.I. workforce.

All of us have experienced A.I. in some way – such as facial authentication on our phone, or asking Alexa to play music we like. With A.I., humans train “smart” machines to make important decisions in healthcare, banking, employment, social media monitoring, retail, and more.

Vision 1948 is a dynamic team of experienced computer scientists. They are passionate about getting the U.S. computing workforce back to gender parity. Their interactive Artificial Intelligence presentation received positive feedback at the AAUW National STEMEd for Girls Technology session and at the 2022 AAUW-IL Leadership Conference.

Speakers

Laurie Barsotti

Laurie Barsotti is Co-President of Vision 1948. She joined the group in 2021, shortly after it formed. Laurie worked in software development for AT&T/Lucent/Alcatel-Lucent/Nokia in Naperville, Illinois, for 32 years. She was an active member of StrongHer Chicagoland, supporting women within the company.

Laurie retired in 2020, and now splits her year between Illinois and a retirement community in Florida.  She also volunteers to help plan and run a 6-day bicycle trip each June.  She and her husband like to travel to watch the Chicago Cubs play in different cities. She also likes bowling, line dancing, reading, playing games/cards, and lifelong learning classes.

Betsy Covell

Betsy Covell is currently Chief Architect of Technology for Core Networks at Nokia where she is driving new technologies such as Cloud Native, Automation, and AI/ML as well as security enhancements and 5G Advanced. This role follows 25+ years of leading technology creation in wireless standards, from 2G through 5G. During that time she developed many patents, wrote papers and books, and spoke at various International conferences on emerging technology.

Betsy is also the President of StrongHer Chicagoland where she leads a team hosting events to raise diversity & inclusion awareness, educate colleagues, network with other StrongHer members throughout Nokia, and support women and girls in tech through volunteer outreach. In her spare time, Betsy enjoys biking, hiking, theater, live music, and spending time with family and friends.

Tina Hinch

Tina Hinch led a worldwide team (US, China, Europe) of 800 software engineers as VP/Head of Engineering at Nokia Cloud Division. Her team’s responsibilities included product specification, software design, development and verification, quality and process management and customer support. In addition to technology leadership, Tina also managed product strategy, organization culture, financial planning and human resources as part of the Cloud executive management team. Throughout her career, Tina has been a strong advocate and mentor for engineers in underrepresented groups. 

Since her retirement in 2021, Tina has been devoting her time to gender equity for women in technology (including being co-president of Vision 1948) and leadership, as well as other non-profit causes including empowerment and leadership for teens. In her spare time, Tina enjoys reading, traveling, playing piano and spending time with family.