Paulina Krawczyk is a Data Scientist and Product Owner with a strong track record of driving data-driven innovation in the insurance sector.
Passionate about diversity, inclusion, and community-building, Paulina is committed to challenging the status quo and creating spaces where different voices are heard and valued.
Alketa currently works at Allianz Global Investors in the Finance Technology & Data department, where she plays a key role in strengthening the organization’s data ecosystem. In her role, she analyzes financial datasets, performs data quality assessments, and applies feature engineering techniques to ensure data is accurate, consistent, and ready for advanced analytics. Her work supports a wide range of financial reporting, performance analysis, modelling and data-driven decision making across the business.
Previously, Alketa worked as an AI & Data Scientist at Vodafone, where she applied machine learning and artificial intelligence to solve real business challenges and deliver personalized customer solutions at scale. She also served as a committee member of Vodafone Women in Technology (WiT), where she actively contributed to initiatives promoting diversity and inclusion in the technology sector.
She holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, USA, and combines her strong technical background with a deep passion for applying AI to create meaningful, real-world impact. Alketa is passionate about the transformative potential of data and firmly believes that AI can drive positive change across industries. She enjoys connecting with others to exchange ideas and explore innovative ways to use AI to solve complex problems, enhance customer experiences, and make a lasting, positive impact in the world.
Alisa Smirnova is an NLP researcher with a Ph.D. from the University of Fribourg and a strong focus on relation extraction, with publications at CIKM, TKDE, and WWW. During the last years of her doctoral studies, she has led a research team at Toloka, driving projects in LLM instruction tuning and data quality. Alisa combines technical expertise with a keen interest in cross-functional project management. She also enjoys organizing research events and workshops.
Ana Armendariz is a PhD student in Economics at the University of St. Gallen with a focus on health economics, causal inference, and applied econometrics. Her research examines the impact of Drug Consumption Rooms on health and criminal outcomes in Switzerland, combining individual-level hospital data with modern difference-in-differences and causal machine learning methods. She also contributes to projects on heterogeneous treatment effects and overfitting in optimal policy learning. Ana speaks five languages and enjoys combining analytical research with practical policy relevance. She is passionate about teaching, clear scientific communication, and using data to understand and improve public health interventions.
Federica is a PhD student at the University of St. Gallen. Her research lies at the intersection of machine learning and causal inference, with applications to labour economics. She has also worked at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and at the European Central Bank. These experiences are tied together by her strong interest in leveraging data to understand economic processes.
Michaela Poncet Macakova holds a master’s degree in Mathematics from ETH Zürich, where she specialized in statistics and machine learning. She has worked as a data scientist at the Swiss Post and BKW, and recently transitioned into a portfolio analyst role in energy trading at Alpiq. In her current position, she focuses on driving data-based decision-making, refining pricing approaches and strengthening forecasting models for the portfolio’s energy consumption.
Michaela is passionate about building models and uncovering actionable insights from data. She enjoys combining expert knowledge with data-driven methods to develop practical business solutions. She is also committed to sustainability and promoting diversity within the tech community.
With a passion for understanding the human mind, Sarah Schürch began her career in psychology before moving into business informatics, AI and the world of data. After completing her Bachelor’s degree in Business Informatics, for which she received the award for the best bachelor thesis, she joined IBM while pursuing her Master’s in Data Science.
Ioanna is a Master’s student in Computational Linguistics with a specialization in Speech Processing at the Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung (IMS) at the University of Stuttgart. She is currently writing her thesis on Voice Privacy. In October 2024, she was among the selected 30 finalists from 500 women in Greece to attend a fully funded 6-month Bootcamp in Data Science and Business Intelligence organized by a Greek initiative supporting women in STEM. There, she enhanced her abilities to work with data-driven methodologies, gain experience on analytical and statistical techniques, and apply her acquired skills in database handling, python, ML, DL and visualization tools.
Since February 2025, she has been a working student at the Ferdinand Steinbeis Institute in Heilbronn, where her research tasks, among others, include agentic AI, Large Language Models, data handling, and data analysis. In the future she is interested into developing AI systems and solutions with direct positive societal impact.
Meenu has an MSc. in Computer Science. She currently works at the University of Sankt Gallen as a product owner and data scientist. She is part of a team that publishes the St Gallen Benchmarking Analysis, a benchmarking analysis that looks at diversity and inclusion indicators across different companies. In addition, as part of the CCDI, it contributes to the Gender Intelligence Report, which is an aggregate analysis of the state of the member companies in terms of diversity and inclusion.
Additionally, she is the product owner of a new application where companies can individualize their dashboards to view diversity and inclusion metrics for their companies and benchmark them against industry peers and means.
She is PMI-ACP certified and loves to do improv.
Patricia Ferreiro is the Founder of Luar Labs, a Zurich-based Think&Do tank focused on AI literacy and strategic advisory. Luar Labs blends philosophy and technical expertise to support leaders developing a sound, human-centric AI strategy.
A seasoned leader with a decade of experience at the intersection of AI and business, Patricia has held key roles at tech giants including IBM, Databricks, and Microsoft, where she served as Industry CTO. Her expertise lies in translating complex technological possibilities into clear value, defining and executing data strategies that drive global organizational success.
Patricia holds a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering, a Master’s in Data Science, and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Contemporary Philosophy.
Nicole’s experience spans behavioural analytics, sustainability data, regulatory insight, and the design and implementation of practical reporting systems. She focuses on shaping data frameworks and ecosystems that bring structure, transparency, and clarity to complex requirements.
Nicole is driven by making sense of complexity and helping people work smarter. She enjoys connecting technical and non-technical teams, translating regulations into usable processes, and building systems that scale as organisations grow. She is motivated by meaningful innovation, hands-on problem-solving, and creating data foundations that open the door to future analytics and AI. She is equally committed to community-building and creating spaces where diverse voices can contribute, shape, and lead the future of data and AI.
Agnieszka (Aga) is a project manager active in the AI field, with a rich background in digital strategy, event management, community building and business development.
She enjoys bringing people and ideas together, turning them into meaningful projects.
After travelling through South America, she moved to Switzerland, where she continues to drive initiatives that blend technology, creativity and real impact.
As Applied AI Scientist, Dr Diana Nicoleta Popa has been working for the past 3 years on improving AI-powered conversational systems. Beyond that, her expertise and interests revolve around solving natural language processing and machine learning problems across various applications. She obtained her M.Sc. in Data Mining and Knowledge Management in 2013 and furthered her PhD in Computer Science in 2019 as part of the Xerox Research Centre Europe (now Naver Labs). Diana is highly interested in promoting diversity, making connections, and advancing the state-of-the-art and applicability of data science.
Esther is the Applied GenAI Lead at AI Bridge, where she translates advances in generative AI into practical applications for businesses. With over a decade of experience in AI content creation and community building, Esther has witnessed firsthand how AI has transformed industries and driven innovation in organizations.
At AI Bridge, she empowers teams to navigate AI challenges and seamlessly integrate generative AI into their daily workflows. Renowned for her pragmatic and motivating approach, Esther has organised and led numerous AI events and workshops, equipping organisations and professionals with the skills and tools to harness the transformative power of AI. Additionally, she serves as the program director for the CAS AI Innovation at HWZ Zurich.
Previously, Esther served as the Director of Content and Programming at Data Science Salon. In this role, she co-created and implemented the strategic roadmap for a diverse community of over 60,000 data scientists.
Arohi is a Senior AI & Data Scientist at EY, where she focuses on leveraging advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI to drive strategic insights and deliver high-impact solutions across business functions. In her role, she collaborates with cross-functional teams (Forensics, Marketing, Finance, Tax, Audit) to translate complex data into significant business value, enhance predictive capabilities, and support scalable AI-driven decision-making across the organisation.
Before joining EY, Arohi completed her PhD in Interdisciplinary Science at ETH Zurich, where she cultivated a deep technical foundation and a strong research orientation.
Arohi is passionate about the transformative potential of data and AI, particularly in how intelligent systems can augment decision quality, unlock new operational efficiencies, and foster innovation within complex enterprises. She enjoys connecting with professionals across the AI and data ecosystem to share ideas, explore emerging trends, and contribute to responsible, impactful AI adoption.
Elzbieta Gralinska is a bioinformatician currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Roche. She received her PhD in Bioinformatics from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, where her research focused on developing methods to identify cluster-specific genes from high-dimensional transcriptomics data. In her current role, she applies data-driven approaches to identify novel drug targets and biomarkers.
Beyond her core research, she is passionate about science diplomacy, biosecurity, and policy advising. She is actively engaged in initiatives that connect science, policy, and international collaboration, including participation in the EU Science Diplomacy Working Group launched by the European Commission. She has also served on the executive board of the Young European Biotech Network e.V.
Shirley is a Principal Data Scientist at Swiss International Airlines, where she leads initiatives in customer personalisation and loyalty analytics, leveraging data to create tailored experiences that drive engagement and retention. With deep expertise in recommender systems, machine learning, and the aviation industry, she drives the strategic roadmap for AI products and services that enhance customer experience.
Passionate about lifelong learning and supporting women in technology, Shirley actively teaches data science and facilitates knowledge exchange across organisations and beyond. She is committed to building community and creating spaces for collaboration and sharing expertise that foster innovation. Through her work, Shirley demonstrates how technical leadership and community building can converge to create lasting impact in both business and the broader data science ecosystem.
Anna Fedorova, PhD, together with her research group Responsible AI Innovation at the Center for AI (ZHAW), she works on trustworthy AI and the operationalisation of ethical guidelines into practical, easy-to-adopt development and governance processes.
She also studies the boundaries of risk management, developing a value-driven approach to identifying and assessing risks that better align with human and corporate ethics. Beyond research she is passionate about public engagement and outreach — from movie screenings and panel discussions to hands-on workshops with AI enthusiasts.
Laura Giulietti is a data-driven Product Manager with a solid foundation in civil engineering and a strong focus on applied analytics for infrastructure and mobility technologies. She holds a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from Università Politecnica delle Marche, complemented by a Data Science Bootcamp from Constructor Academy in Zürich.
After early roles in construction design and management, Laura expanded into global product development at Hilti, where she worked at the intersection of software, hardware, and customer-centric innovation. She is now part of Amberg Technologies, where she contributes to developing intelligent surveying and inspection solutions, leveraging data science, sensor fusion, and advanced analytics to support the digital transformation of the rail and tunnel industries.
