In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, Janet Bush talks with British mathematician and technologist Anne‑Marie Imafidon, co-founder of Stemettes, a social initiative dedicated to inspiring and promoting the next generation of young women in STEM sectors.

Imafidon invokes the “herstory” of stellar female technologists, such as Gladys West, who contributed to the development of GPS; Hedy Lamarr, whose work on frequency-hopping spectrum technology enabled Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; and Stephanie Kwolek, who created the first ultra-strong synthetic fibers, Kevlar being the best-known. In a rallying call for inclusion in a technologically driven world, Imafidon talks about persistent bias in data collection and algorithms that are making very big decisions that affect large parts of people’s lives. The stakes are very, very high, and we need to get this right, she states.

This conversation was recorded in February 2022. To read a transcript of this episode, visit: https://mck.co/Imafidon

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