Originally published by Ad Age here.

When I was a teenager, I loved watching “American Idol.” The courage of the contestants baring their hearts and souls in front of the whole world was so heartening. One day my dad, amused by my love of the show, asked me about its premise, and when I explained it to him he smiled and said, “Don’t just watch ‘American Idol.’ Become an American idol.” I am no Adele, so he was obviously telling me to think deeply about the difference between being a passive observer versus an active creator, innovator, leader—and the courage it takes to become the latter. 

Before I joined RPA, the absence of women in data and technology roles and meetings felt like a void. It was a consistent theme in nearly every industry I worked in. During my Ph.D. work at Northwestern University, I studied in-depth how a lack of representation of women in history and culture impacts their narratives and identities. Now, with the exponential growth in artificial intelligence technology use, the problem is even more urgent. These large language models are based on existing knowledge that was already biased against women and minorities by their very absence. 

Women need to be active technologists and lead decision-making about which data to study, why, and what questions to answer with it. Otherwise, they will remain observers and be acted on by products and decisions produced by biased data that impacts their lives daily. This value has driven my career decisions over the past few years. Today, I create data products and insights for large-scale national clients on a day-to-day basis and hope that I am leading by example. I encourage the next generation of women advertisers to make data their best friend—and, more than anything, don’t be an observer, be a creator.