Deltaker i Impact Challenge 2022: Inno-Sci
Eunice Hammond er seriegründer og lidenskapelig opptatt av mangfold og inkludering i samfunnet. Våren 2022 deltok hun i Impact Challenge Inkubasjonsprogram for sosial innovasjon med sin oppstartsbedrift Inno-Sci. Her følger 5 spørsmål besvart av Eunice om hennes gründerreise.
1. What is your drive as a social entrepreneur?
Between starting a company, managing a home, a family and working in corporate, I can say life has been challenging. We are still far away from achieving equity and inclusion. We see the gaps widening as unemployment has increased during the past 3years. The data shows that there are still too many people, who are highly skilled and trained, being excluded in society. My question is, how did we get here? How can we as a people change this?
Today, more women than ever are earning bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering subjects. That tells me plenty of women have an interest in Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), but a diminishing number consider tech an attractive option. Norway has a huge number of highly educated women with diverse skills who are underemployed and struggling to get into employment. The challenges of culture, attitudes and employability skills have always been an issue for professionals. The question is, how do we together with organisations increase the labour force and fill employment gaps in the Tech Industry? By getting more women into related jobs we are not only contributing to the Norwegian economy, but we are also making Norway a hub for tech resources.
2. Can you elaborate on how you ended up in tech?
After years of working in industry, I knew that excelling in the workplace was not going to be the only way I was going to distinguish myself in the world. At the same time, I was energized by my entrepreneurial efforts. Being a woman with a diverse background, in most cases and at any workplace, I was the only person from a diverse background. I also realised that the technology and skills learnt from studying across the globe has been a great contribution toward the achievements made whilst working in various business backgrounds. So in 2019 I started my own company Inno-Sci. In almost every meeting early in my career, I was the only woman and also the person from a diverse background. When I was raising capital for Inno-Sci, I almost never saw someone of colour on the other side of the table. But I’ve been very fortunate and lucky to get terrific advice along the way from so many mentors and organisations. These are the strong community of people who have played the most significant role in my life and have supported me in this journey.
3. What is your vision for Inno-Sci in the future?
We´re at the dawning of a new age as we begin to see widespread adoption of Cloud technology and cybersecurity into everyday life. I believe in the coming years, Cloud, blockchain, Cybersecurity, and NFTs will impact almost every single industry in the world, whether people realise it or not. My hopes are that Inno-Sci will be able to position itself as a global leader in this incredibly exciting industry and to help lay the foundations of diversity in Tech and get more women and people from disadvantaged communities involved in the next iteration of the internet with a heavy focus on ethics, diversity, and inclusion. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past as we build these new worlds, but also ensure we don't neglect our current world in the process. So in short, I hope we can help build new and exciting worlds which empower everyone to embrace their creativity, while also ensuring we leave the real world in a better condition than we received it.
4. What have been the biggest struggles as a social entrepreneur so far?
1. Access to Collaboration with private organisations.
2. Increase Private funding in exchange for access to programmers. The future of the tech industry lies in the hands of everyday tech employees, new startup founders and investors with a fresh pair of eyes. And what’s become painfully clear is that commitment from the top is not optional. It is a must and cannot be postponed. The difference in 2022, is that we can talk about the solutions, but that doesn´t mean we’re fixing the problem. Let us invest, let’s walk the talk, let’s get this fixed!
Organisations of every type, size and industry are using the technology for a wide variety of use cases, such as data backup, disaster recovery, email, virtual desktops, software development and testing, big data analytics, and customer facing web applications. For example, health care companies are using the cloud to design more personalized treatments for patients. Financial service companies are using the cloud to power real-time fraud detection and prevention. Video game makers are using the cloud to deliver online games to millions of players around the world. With cloud computing your business can become more agile, reduce cost, instantly scale, and deploy globally in minutes. Cloud computing gives you instant access to a broad range of technologies so you can innovate faster and build nearly anything you can imagine from infrastructure services such as compute, storage and databases to internet of things, machine learning, data analytics, and much more. You can deploy technology services in a matter of minutes and get from idea to implementation, several orders of magnitude faster than before. This gives you the freedom to experiment and test new ideas to differentiate customer experiences and transform your business, such as adding machine learning in order to personalize experiences for your customers and improve their engagement.
Putting resources in closer proximity to improve your customer experience is our number one goal. No matter your location, size or industry, we offer industry focused skilled employees who are day one ready to work, can manage your infrastructure and data centers so you as company can focus on what matters most to your business, growth!
5. What has been most rewarding?
It has been most rewarding to see more women move towards STEM and now than ever more interested in tech careers through our programs and partnerships. Our programs are well researched, and tailor made to the current needs of industry. To women it offers a high standard of learning experience and leadership. Each of our accelerators is made up of project-based core courses that take candidates from the very beginner to the most advanced skill set. With every successful completion of each program, and as our candidate’s progress through their educational path, they receive international accreditations, networking, and certifications of achievement. Plenty has been written about the solutions regarding inclusion in the tech industry. Despite the great efforts to expand access, it is apparently clear that innovation and inclusion in the tech industry is a reflection of our society.
I believe that many important breakthroughs will emerge in the coming years, and women will be among those pioneering them. Together, we need to make sure that any women with the aptitude, talent, and desire to pursue a career in tech and STEM has not only the opportunities to do so but also the support to thrive.
Du kan lese mer om Inno-Sci på https://www.inno-sci.com/