Tech Inspired

Meet Kim Dressendoerfer, who works as a Technical Specialist and Cognitive Solution Architect for AI and Data at IBM. In this function she gets to use her creativity to build new solutions for clients daily. Already as a young girl, Kim was curious about technology and computers. She learned by doing and tried to figure out how systems or games work. Do you know, what her first ever played game was?

It is easy to get inspired just by listening to Kim talk about her job. She started her career at IBM with an internship and was part of a great team, where she could follow her interest in applying her creativity to find solutions for the problems at hand. This way of thinking helps her to identify common themes and seeing the bigger picture.

Kim clearly found a job that aligns with her purpose. Thus, sit down, get yourself a cup of coffee or tea and listen to Kim’s tips how she got there, what drives her for the future, and why her favourite role model has the best quotes.

Meet Dorothea Baur, self-described independent ethics expert. Five years ago, she started her own consulting business Baur Consulting, where she advises companies in the financial industry about ethical questions. More recently, she has immersed herself into the field of artificial intelligence and ethics.

In her daily work, she helps to define the necessary vocabulary to tackle the ethical questions at hand. Moreover, she raises awareness for our power over and responsibility for technology and shows where human judgment plays a role.

In this podcast, Dorothea shares how her intrinsic motivation changed as she became her own boss. Her continuing inspiration are the intellectual challenges that she can work on a daily basis. Further, she shares her advice how to find your dream job aligning with your personal values.

Meet Sandra Tobler, the Co-Founder and CEO of Futurae Technologies AG an ETH Zurich spin-off that specializes in cyber security. Her company strives to set new standards in authentication security without compromising on user experience. She is convinced that IT is the most powerful and creative industry with all the positive and negative aspects known. She points out that IT security is not just a box to tick off on a check list. On the contrary, it must be treated as an integral design element of a framework, service or digital product.

Sandra is also a passionate promoter of the different players in the IT security ecosystem as a board member of the initiative Swiss Cybersecurity Startup Map. Additionally, Sandra talks about the skills that are in high demand and too few people combine, yet. An absolute must episode to listen to for people thinking about a career in cyber security.

Meet Alex Sokolowska, who shares her experience about the empowerment of women in STEM while working in the academic environment and the start-up world. Follow her journey from a PhD in Computational Science at the University of Zurich, to a San Francisco start-up and her current position as a post-doc researcher at TU Delft. For her, technology is the tool to explore the world in a more scientific manner. And we talk about why there is a need for an equivalent of medicine’s Hippocratic oath in technology.

During her PhD she founded the non-profit organization Women++. Here, she talks about the motivation behind Women++ and shares her thoughts about the importance of networks and why women need to network to be able to shape new and trending topics together with men. Through her networks, she met so many badass female scientists, founders, executives and managers that inspired her on her own journey.

Meet Dalith Steiger! Get to know her journey from Software Engineer at UBS to Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SwissCognitive, a network to discuss the opportunities, impacts and development of Artificial Intelligence.

She chose to study Mathematics and Information Technology because numbers are easy to understand. Moreover, programming languages are international and spoken worldwide. That is one reason why Dalith is a big advocate of diversity in technology. Another one is the presence of bias. She explains why it is important to involve diverse teams in the process of translating information into algorithms and what she calls thoughtful coding.

Dalith believes that nobody should be afraid to get in touch with technology and explains why this is an eye-opening experience. Listen to this episode to learn more about Dalith’s four key principles and what drives her as a mother of two teenage girls to make sure that the next generation has a perspective.

Meet Maja Schreiner! Maja has been in the Tech industry for a very long time and has recently decided to start her own venture. She grew up in Serbia and was already interested in programming since she was a kid. Although she wasn't looking for a job in Switzerland, she ended up in a Startup in Lausanne. 

Later in her career she became aware of how important it is to be able to work part-time. This led her to found her own business, enabling companies to offer job-sharing opportunities.  

Want to know why she believes job sharing will be of advantage for companies? Listen to this podcast and find out, how Maja led her career in tech until today!

Recently our partner community, Girls in Tech Switzerland, has recorded a podcast introducing themselves and sharing their advice, insights and tips about tech and the current situation. We are happy to share this podcast with you as well.

Listen to their team members talking about their favorite apps, why they believe in tech for good and how they cope with the lockdown.

Meet Marisa Tschopp! She is a researcher at scip ag (www.scip.ch), a cybersecurity and tech company in Zurich. She is conducting research about AI and technology from a psychological perspective, with a wide range of questions related to psychological phenomena, governance and ethical implications. Her research areas are about trust (What does it take to trust AI?), behavioral performance measurement of conversational AI (How smart is Siri?), and lethal autonomous weapons system (killerrobots and how to ban them!).

At one point in her career, she decided that it is time to spend her time in a job that is not just good enough. It took her one year of work to land her dream job at scip. Want to find out how she approached her job search? How can she connect her studies in psychology with cybersecurity and why is it so important that companies do research as well.

Listen to this podcast and get some amazing advice on how everyone can find their dream job, why networks are so important and what small steps can lead to according to the best advice Marisa got in her life.

Psst, Marisa will be a speaker at the #wetechtogether conference, we are really excited listening to her knowledge session on the 3rd of October 2020, don't miss her speech!

Meet Bettina Wolko! She is a software engineer at Namics with an interesting background! Having started out with an apprenticeship as a chemical lab assistant in Dusseldorf she soon realized that software engineering was a way cooler option - discover why she made that switch in this podcast episode.

We also discuss how she must start mornings with coffee, what a typical day is like for her at work (hint: not typical at all), and Bettina helps us debunk the coder stereotype myth we see in movies.

Although it took her some time to learn to code, Bettina believes everyone can learn to program - and she shares her recommendations for anyone who wants to become a software engineer.

Listen to Bettina’s wise words for anyone thinking about switching careers and the best advice she was given - which definitely applies to work and life!

Alice studied Game Design at ZHdK, a degree she discovered at an introductory evening and straight away she was hooked as it combined everything she loved: programming, engineering, gaming, writing, narrative, art and design. Today she’s Game Developer at Air Console, and works on a cloud-based console which uses phones as controllers and in her spare time she runs The Mane Quest, where she reviews horse games!

In this episode, Alice discusses the Swiss game industry, what the career opportunities are and what skills you need to get into this scene - whether you want to design and develop games or just want something game-related and to be part of a cool and growing industry.