Meet the AI4ALL Team: Emily Reid, VP, Open Learning
We are thrilled to introduce Emily Reid, the VP of Open Learning at AI4ALL. In her role, she will be leading and launching the AI4ALL Open Learning platform, which will make AI4ALL’s inclusive and culturally responsive AI education accessible to students all over the world. The Open Learning platform will empower 1 million high schoolers globally to create change in their communities and develop foundational technical and ethical AI skills using AI by 2023.
Emily has always been interested in education and how math and science connect to the rest of the world. She fell in love with the field of AI for a similar reason: because of AI’s potential to create positive social impact on human problems ranging from climate change to disease diagnosis. Prior to joining AI4ALL’s team, Emily completed her B.S. in Mathematics at Tufts University and worked as a Senior Cyber Security Engineer at the MITRE Corporation before going back to graduate school at Columbia University to study Natural Language Processing and completing a M.S. in Computer Science. During her graduate studies, she also became very interested in accessible and inclusive computer science education and got involved with Girls Who Code. There she worked as the Director of Education, where she was responsible for ensuring the delivery of quality computer science education. She has also advised and created inclusive computer science curriculum for universities, schools, and companies around the world through her consulting firm, E.E. Reid Consulting.
With her breadth of experience in education and AI from both industry and nonprofit perspectives, her lens for diversity and inclusion in education and workspaces, and her strong belief in education as a tool to solve problems in the classroom and in our communities, Emily is a great addition to our team. Learn more about Emily, what motivated her to join AI4ALL, and her vision for the Open Learning platform.
As told to Eunice Poon of AI4ALL by Emily Reid
What motivated you to join AI4ALL?
The important parts of finding quality work for me are alignment with mission, a fantastic team, and interesting and exciting challenges within the work. For me, AI4ALL really has all three of these factors.
AI4ALL’s mission grabbed me from the beginning and really aligned with my personal mission to make the tech industry a space that is more diverse, inclusive, and human. I was also moved to join AI4ALL because this is one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with. I am really impressed with the team’s commitment to the mission and the quality of the programs. So far, I have worked most closely with Tess (AI4ALL’s CEO), and I can see her passion for the work and also her commitment to building a world-class team and a world-class culture. That’s not an easy thing to do, so I am really impressed by that.
What are some of the bigger issues you see in this space regarding getting underrepresented people into AI?
The reason I got involved in the CS and AI space was that as an engineer and as a researcher, I saw that the tech industry was really homogenous. I experienced a lot of challenges and would see other women or other engineers who were underrepresented around me also having challenges. On top of that, I realized how influential and important technology is in our culture and that disconnect was very problematic for me.
Right now, I see engineers trying to create technologies to serve humanity, yet the engineers don’t fully represent that humanity. I see news stories popping up every other day about algorithms showing biases; we are literally encoding the bias that we have in our society and valuing certain types of qualities and cultures over others.
The diversity and inclusion issue is a problem across all the technology fields, but AI has the issue of reflecting and sometimes exacerbating the bias that we already have in society. That’s why I think diversifying AI is all the more important. It’s not to say that people who are in the field are making biased algorithms intentionally. I think that even the most well-intentioned group of individuals — even if it’s a homogenous group — is not going to make the best decisions.
The more that we have a diverse group of people at the table developing these technologies, the better we’re able to work towards creating the technology in a way that is more beneficial and is a better reflection of the society we want to have.
What is your vision for the future of AI4ALL’s Open Learning platform, which you will be leading?
My vision for the future of the Open Learning platform is that we are truly democratizing access to AI education. We want the platform to meet students where they are and show them what their potential in AI could be.
More tactically, that means we’ll have an online platform that is coupled with easy-to-run, team-based offline activities.
I find that students really learn well online when they’re coupling it with learning with peers. This helps them to develop teamwork and leadership, which are important skills to develop as they continue in the field. No one is developing this technology in a vacuum and technologists need to be able to communicate their work well with others. So we’re coming up with ways to be able to have this peer-to-peer experience, ideally accessible anywhere; right now we’re experimenting with a couple of different formats to do that.
Who were your role models growing up? Do you have any role models now?
When I was growing up I was interested in a lot of different things. I remember reading the book “My Life with Chimpanzees”, where I learned about Jane Goodall and became obsessed with this idea of working directly with chimpanzees and being where she was in Tanzania. In retrospect, I think her work inspired me in a sort of roundabout way. Even though I didn’t go into natural sciences, I was inspired by how she combined empathy and science to make new discoveries and to break the mold of what had been done in that field of research at the time.
I also had some fantastic teachers, including my parents, who were my inspiration for seeing education as a way to solve problems, and who encouraged me in my math and science skills.
In terms of role models now, the first one that comes in mind for me is Megan Smith. For me, she is a great example of someone who has done such amazing work in technology herself but also inspires people to use their skills for good. Once, I saw her speak, and she did this thing that was such a great example of leadership. She was doing a keynote, and after introducing herself and her work, she cut her time by bringing out a group of women who worked on her team so they could share about their work and message. In that moment, I felt like her actions were such a good example of selfless leadership: yielding her time to people she was mentoring.
I am also very inspired by the many students who I’ve worked with who are younger than me. I hear a lot of negative press about Gen Z and people asking where “kids these days are going,” and that is not what I see at all in my work with middle school, high school, and college students. I see individuals who are hungry to learn, motivated to solve problems, and frankly, I feel like they’re many years ahead of me when I was at their age.
What do you like to do when you’re not bringing AI and CS education to young people around the world?
When I’m not working on AI or CS education, I try to unplug. I think it’s really important to carve out time for yourself. Technology is a really important and powerful tool but we need to learn how to be in balance with it. So when I’m offline, I like to run, hike, practice yoga, and spend time with friends and family. I’ve been trying to pick up some more real hobbies lately, so I’ve been learning how to play guitar from my brother, who is a musician.
About Emily
Emily Reid is a computer scientist, educator, and entrepreneur. Emily is the VP of the Open Learning Program at AI4ALL and the owner of E. E. Reid Consulting, LLC, where she advises and creates curriculum for schools and businesses to help them build inclusive computing education programs.
Previously, Emily was the founding Director of Education at Girls Who Code, where she was responsible for ensuring that GWC programs were unrivaled in delivering quality computer science education. During her time at GWC, Emily’s team taught over 30,000 girls to code and trained over 2,000 computer science educators. Before Girls Who Code, Emily was a Senior Cyber Security Engineer at the MITRE Corporation, and has published research in computational linguistics and cybersecurity. She speaks and writes on diversity, education, and technology.
Emily holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University, and a B.S. in Mathematics from Tufts University. She believes strongly that we can change the world for the better through a diverse and inclusive tech industry, using computer science as a tool to solve pressing social problems.
