I am proud to announce that Afiniti has become a corporate sponsor of Ignite Worldwide, a global nonprofit committed to helping young women and non-binary students pursue a future in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM).

Background

My history with Ignite spans 3 years, during which I’ve witnessed how their initiatives have made a tangible difference in students’ investment in technical topics.

My Afiniti colleagues and I saw this firsthand a few weeks ago when we hosted [a virtual field trip and Q&A session](/news/detail/ignite-worldwide) with sixteen high school students from Seattle.

New Sponsorship

With Afiniti’s corporate sponsorship, our collaboration expands to include leadership roles and regular educational events. I am delighted to share that our Chief Customer Officer, Orlando Hampton, and I have joined Ignite’s Executive Advisory Board. Together, we will help shape and support the organization’s sustainability and scalability strategies.

Ignite’s mission to make it easier for girls to build careers in STEM fields is dear to me personally. It’s also important to Afiniti, which continues to prioritize closing the gender gap among its employees, last year adding 110% more women to its global team. By hosting events like virtual field trips, workshops, and panels, we look forward to sparking the interest of girls and non-binary youth from underserved communities in future science and technology careers.

Looking Ahead

One notable upcoming event is Ignite Worldwide’s annual Virtual Spring Gala, running from May 3-9, 2021. Afiniti is an “Innovator” sponsor of this week-long event, and everyone from Afiniti and beyond is invited to attend. The gala will feature talks, career sessions with senior executives, auctions, and more to help raise awareness about Ignite’s work and build resources for its development and sustainability.

We hope to see you there! Stay tuned for future educational events when the fall school semester begins.

Lindsay Hua is the VP of Global Deployment at Afiniti.

On February 10th, we hosted a virtual field trip and Q&A session with Ignite Worldwide, a global nonprofit that has supported the STEM education of over 80,000 girls and non-binary youth from underserved communities.

Sixteen high school students from Eastlake High School in Seattle attended the event, which kicked off with a presentation of Afiniti’s work and a virtual tour of Afiniti’s international offices through photos and stories.

Some of us then shared personal stories of our career paths leading to Afiniti. This was followed by a Q&A session where the students learned more about our careers and backgrounds, and what life is like at a technology company. They asked many thoughtful questions, even more than time allowed to answer.

The final part of the event was a breakout session where we went through interactive AI exercises to further explain how machine learning works, including beating Afiniti’s AI at rock paper scissors!

We were thrilled to learn that after attending this event, 100% of the students indicated they were interested in STEM based on a survey by Ignite Worldwide. One student reflected: “The women at Afiniti really empowered me to believe that I do have a place in STEM and I can do whatever I want to do. I loved hearing their opinions and stories and they inspired me to pursue STEM even more.”

It has been a privilege to be part of this meaningful cause. Kudos to my colleagues Lindsay Hua, Holly Jones, Priya Sangameswaran, Rida Shah, and Caroline Mehta for making this a success.

We look forward to participating in future opportunities to reach out to those who can benefit from our stories and knowledge.

by Caroline Dollman, Director of Business Development & Events

What do customers expect from the brands they engage with?

With the rapid growth of communication tools in the last decade, customer expectations have also changed. Today, customers interact with a brand four additional times before making a purchase than they did in 2005. Customers also demand effortless, personalized services increasingly on digital channels like email and messaging apps. While this poses a challenge for businesses in utilizing and managing new mediums, it also provides an opportunity to innovate and increase customer loyalty by interacting with customers where, when, and how often they want.

To reap the rewards of successful customer engagement, it is important to understand preferences and build a customer-facing strategy using the right frequency and channels depending on individual customer needs. Research shows that businesses that personalize their customer communications can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50% and increase revenues by 5 to 15%.

Explore communication preferences of today’s customers in our infographic below:

At Afiniti, we help businesses utilize data to improve customer interactions by pairing better.

Afiniti had the honor of receiving the inaugural Hero Award for the ‘Best Use of AI in Enterprise’ at the 39th annual GITEX Technology Week.

GITEX, the biggest technology show in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, brought together over 100,000 visitors from 140 countries to discuss the trends shaping technology today, including smart cities, future mobility, 5G, and artificial intelligence.

For the first time ever, GITEX hosted an awards ceremony to celebrate the industry disruptors and technology leaders at the forefront of the digital transformation. The inaugural event honored ambitious projects from all corners of the tech ecosystem across 9 key categories.

Afiniti’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Farmer proudly accepted the award on stage from Josh Constine, Editor at Large at TechCrunch.

“GITEX is the leading space where technology and innovation are discussed in this region, it’s an area where we are starting to make strides in and so this is really exciting for us. This is our first year here, and so to be part of GITEX and getting involved with the awards has been an additional benefit. We are extremely happy to be here celebrating with everyone,” said Farmer.

Last week, Caroline O’Brien, VP of Data Science at Afiniti, spoke on the artificial intelligence panel at the Vogue Codes Sydney Summit.

Joined by Rachael Rekart of Soul Machines and Samantha Wong of Blackbird Ventures, Caroline and her fellow panelists sought to decode and demystify AI for the audience.

Four major learnings, as outlined by Vogue, were:

AI is being used in fashion
“Amazon’s fashion lab has machines creating new fashion. That’s right, machine fashion designers.” – Caroline O’Brien

AI finds tasks humans find hard, easy and vice versa
“Machines are better at things that humans find really difficult. But they can’t do simple things, like pick things up. For example, in finance, trading is now largely algorithmic. Creativity is harder to do away with.” – Samantha Wong

AI requires teamwork
“To make effective AI products requires many different skill sets. Diversity in AI teams is really important and there is a role for many different backgrounds within them.” – Caroline O’Brien

AI is moving towards reading human emotions better than humans
“Our digital humans are hyper-realistic. They’re really perceived as more engaging, more effective, not only because of AI and emotional intelligence but also voice, video, text, image in one interaction. For example, if I text my boyfriend that ‘I’m fine’ he doesn’t know if I’m really fine without my inflection.” – Rachael Rekart, on pioneering digital humans.

All in all, it was a valuable opportunity to explain a topic that many still find mystifying, and to use Afiniti as an example of how a diverse, cohesive team makes an AI product successful.