Join us for DataConnect Conference on Oct 2-3, 2025. Round 1 pricing ends December 31, 2024.
With today’s rapidly rising AI capabilities, organizations are under immense pressure to align AI with core business values and navigate responsible deployment, all while staying on top of complex and fast-changing regulatory landscapes. This session will showcase how strategic AI design drives transformative outcomes while mitigating potential downsides and establishing trust.
Discover proven and practical strategies, including the introduction of robust risk assessment frameworks, the development of policies that encourage responsible AI deployment, and the importance of transparent and explainable AI models. Real-world examples paired with expert insights will illustrate how effective AI alignment can lead to increased efficiency, innovation, and competitive advantage.
Attendees will leave equipped with actionable insights and tools to guide their organizations in designing an AI strategy for solutions that are innovative, sustainable, and aligned with ethical standards.
This session is sponsored by Further!
Lauren Burke-McCarthy is a Senior Data Science Lead at Further, where she guides organizations in the strategic enablement and implementation of innovative AI solutions. Previously a Data Scientist at CoverMyMeds, Lauren built models and systems to improve understanding of user needs, enhance products, and discover opportunities. She began her data science career in the retail space, developing solutions across several areas, including supply chain, inventory management, and enterprise business.
Lauren is the Director of Operations of Women in Analytics, where her primary focus lies in strategy and community growth. She also hosts the WIA After Hours podcast. Lauren serves as a Core Advisor on the Midwest Big Data Hub's Community Advisory Panel, a member of TECH CORPS' Regional Steering Committee, Chair of COSI's KINETIC Board, and a founding member of scikit-learn's Communication Team. She is the recipient of the inaugural Ohio Trailblazers Award, celebrating women transforming Ohio tech.
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Kristy Hollingshead is a Senior Data Science Lead at Further, where she leads solution design and development for several different clients in the healthcare space. Her expertise lies in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, especially in parsing, semantics, anomaly detection, and linguistics-based profile analysis. In a previous role as a Research Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), Kristy led small technical teams implementing prototype systems for data wrangling and visualization of social media data for non-technical users to increase situational awareness. Her earliest work in the field was seminal in demonstrating that our everyday language - spoken or written - carries quantifiable indicators of neurological and mental health. Kristy is passionate about applications of AI that enable people to do what we are good at, and are not competitors to nor replacements for people, but instead serve as useful tools for us.
With a PhD in computer science from Oregon Health & Science University, Kristy’s work has long focused on providing actionable insights to non-data science practitioners, including clinicians, therapists, social workers, astronauts, and operations support. She has been a member of and reviewer for the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) since 2006, and served as a co-founder and co-organizer of the Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych) annual workshop from 2015 to 2020. In her spare time, Kristy is chasing her goal of running a half marathon in all 50 states (current count: 28).
