ENGINEERS FOR PROFESSIONAL INCLUSION CONFERENCE
Hosted by
the Society of Women Engineers @ UCLA
Advocacy Committee
The Engineers for Professional Inclusion Conference (EPIC) engages students, company representatives, and academics, from a wide range of backgrounds, in an open conversation about what it means to be inclusive in a professional environment. Our goal for EPIC is to facilitate meaningful conversations about diversity between a wide range of students and professionals and help participants brainstorm solutions that they can apply at UCLA and their workplaces. Overall, we hope that both students and professionals walk away from this event feeling more motivated and optimistic about fixing the lack of diversity in engineering, and realize they have a community on campus that cares. Additionally, we hope that these conversations will give them the tools to start and lead more conversations with others in an effort to heighten awareness surrounding obstacles that minorities in STEM fields face.
OUR KEYNOTE SPEAKER
DIANA SKAAR (SHE/HER)
Head of Business Development, (Google) X
Diana is a Technology Executive at (Google) X, responsible for taking early-stage technologies from concept to go-to-market via strategic partnerships for prototyping, piloting, and first commercial revenues.
Diana led cross-functional business development efforts for the robotics portfolio at X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory of inventors and entrepreneurs who build radical technologies and launch companies that aim to make 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems. As part of managing X's robotics portfolio, Diana became a founding member of Intrinsic (a robotics AI platform), successfully taking the project from its early stages at X to launching it as an Alphabet company in July 2021.
Diana is also passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, calling for greater allyship in the workplace (see “All Nails Rise: A Call for Solidarity”). Diana was recently honored by Manhattan Beach City Council and CA State Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi for her efforts in uniting local communities against hate.
She is a proud Bruin, having earned both her MBA and M.S. in Computer Science at UCLA.
OUR PANEL
APARNA DHINAKARAN (SHE/HER)
Co-Founder and CPO at Arize AI
Aparna Dhinakaran is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Arize AI, a pioneer and early leader in machine learning (ML) observability. A frequent speaker at top conferences and thought leader in the space, Dhinakaran was recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Enterprise Technology category. Before Arize, Dhinakaran was an ML engineer and leader at Uber, Apple, and TubeMogul (acquired by Adobe). During her time at Uber, she built several core ML infrastructure platforms, including Michealangelo. She has a bachelor’s from Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program, where she published research with Berkeley's AI Research group. She is on a leave of absence from the Computer Vision Ph.D. program at Cornell University.
MARIANNE GONZALEZ (SHE/HER)
NASA JPL Technologist and Systems Engineer
Gonzalez, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, worked on an experiment to generate oxygen on the surface of Mars and also helped build an atmospheric monitor for the International Space Station. She now focuses on the Europa Clipper, which will visit Jupiter's moon to look for signs of microbial life. She was recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List.
MANISHA SHARMA (SHE/HER)
Founding Engineer @ Arize AI
Manisha Sharma is a founding software engineer at Arize AI, a machine learning observability platform. Most recently, she was named to the 2022 Forbes “30 Under 30” list. Previously, she’s worked at Slack and Pandora Music as a software engineer and studied Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley.
TINA YEO (SHE/HER)
Post-Doctoral Scholar
HyeJin Tina Yeo is a Post-Doctoral scholar of Momentum: Accelerating Equity in Computing and Technology at UCLA. Her primary research activities involve working on the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research entitled the Center for Inclusive Computing (CIC) longitudinal survey project. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology of Higher Education in the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are motivated by the exploration of equity, diversity, and inclusion in educational access and the success of minoritized and unrepresented students, especially in STEM education. Specifically, she has investigated campus climates and racial microaggressions, educational and career pathways of domestic and international students of color at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) and community colleges. As a scholar-activist, she collaborates with diverse campus and community partners, and mentors/teaches the next generation of education professionals and scholars to be equity-minded and advocate social justice at the local and global levels. She tries to meditate every day. She loves watching a documentary and Bridgerton.
TSION BEHAILU (SHE/HER)
Founding Engineer at Arize AI
I was born in Ethiopia, grew up in Atlanta, and left it all for California to attend UC Berkeley. After college, I joined Google as a software engineer where I worked on various teams (Android Partner, Google Drive), along with being featured on countless panels & media (Google Students YouTube, Careers with Code magazine). In March 2020, I quit and joined as a founding engineer at Arize AI.
SCHEDULE
6:00 - 6:15 PM
WELCOME
6:15 - 6:30 PM
OPENING REMARKS
6:30 - 7:15 PM
PANEL
7:15 - 8:00 PM
DINNER AND SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION
8:00 - 8:45
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
8:45 - 9:00 PM