Speakers

Conference Dinner

1850-2200 Thursday, October 24^th

Dr. Revi Sterling, Technical Director, Women in the Digital Ecosystem Fund (WiDEF)

Dr. Revi Sterling

Dr. Revi Sterling has worked to advance digital inclusion in both domestic and international contexts for over 25 years. She is the Technical Director for the Women in the Digital Ecosystem Fund (WiDEF), a White House initiative to close the gender and technology gap. She previously developed and ran the USAID Women Connect Challenge, another presidential program that successfully spanned three administrations.

Prior to these positions, Revi founded and directed the first ICT for Development professional master’s program in the United States at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she also did her PhD in Technology, Media, and Society. Before academia, Revi spent a decade at Microsoft Research spearheading efforts in gender equity in computer science, and in the Emerging Technologies division as a software engineer and program manager.

She serves on leading gender and technology boards, has testified before the U.S. Congress about emerging technologies, and has received such awards as the Anita Borg Institute’s Social Impact Award and Engineering4Change’s Women Technologist of the Year. She is passionate about rural connectivity, community readiness for technology, and everything related to digital equity.

Friday Lunch Speaker

1420-1520 Friday, October 25^th

Avner Mizrahi, CEO of engageSPARK

“Robocalls” is a dirty word – but should it be?  A deep dive into Robocalls for Research and Impact in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Abstract:

I will discuss largescale remote data collection in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with a particular focus on how robocalls – which everyone generally hates – are actually a critical component of international development and humanitarian research in LMICs.

I will walk through some “robocalls for development” case studies from across the globe, including work done by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health professors.  I will discuss how generative AI is allowing for even more robust data collection from offline and illiterate populations.  And I’ll do a brief demo of the engageSPARK platform to give attendees a feel for how they could create a robocall (IVR) survey for humanitarian research and launch it anywhere in the world.

Bio:

Avner Mizrahi

Avner Mizrahi is the CEO of engageSPARK, a social enterprise that helps university researchers, international development organizations, and social enterprises collect data from hard-to-reach populations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) – remotely and at scale.  engageSPARK has supported academic research and other humanitarian projects in 185+ countries run by professors at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and many other research universities, as well as by hundreds of NGOs and UN agencies.

Before engageSPARK, Avner practiced law, first as a corporate litigator, then as a human rights lawyer.  He led one of the largest and first insurance cases to come out of the 2008 credit crisis and then spent several years in Uganda fighting for the rights of vulnerable and marginalized individuals.  While in Uganda, Avner co-founded the anti-corruption organization Not In My Country and then co-founded engageSPARK.  Avner has a JD from New York University School of Law and a BA in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University.