To commemorate International Women’s Day, 2022, IIDS hosted a panel discussion, ‘Paths to Leadership in Data Science’ on the 6th of March. The speakers, Ruchi Santoshwar, Vice-President- DM &Analytics Lead at DBS Bank, and Neha Porwal, Senior Manager AI/ML, Pepsico, spoke about raising awareness regarding existing biases and under-representation of women in the field of Data-Science.

The panellists said that data scientists and engineers are the backbones of the data science industry. However, having the domain knowledge to make better business decisions is very important for leadership roles. Data Science leaders should be able to look at data and translate them into actionable insights to make business sense.

In a well-attended discussion, the speakers emphasized the role of having professional mentors and the significance of networking to the leader’s entire team, not just herself.