The Facebook page of the Faculty of Social Administration, Thammasat University has posted an announcement inviting TU students to attend a University of California, Berkeley free online Human Resource event about Virtual Work Place, New Leadership Skills, Distributed Team, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The event will be available on Zoom this Friday, 17 July at 7:30am, Bangkok time. Students may register for the event at this link.
The Thammasat University Library owns many books about different aspects of leadership and artificial intelligence.
The online panel event is co-organized by Berkeley Global and the Women in Tech Initiative – University of California.
As its website explains, The Women in Technology Initiative at the University of California (WITI@UC)
envisions a world in which women are proportionately represented and equitably compensated throughout the professional ranks in the tech industry and academia. To get there, we are preparing the next generation of technologists, supporting data-driven diversity research, and engaging corporate partners.
The University of California Women in Technology Committee (UC WIT) is a self-chartered, independent entity that promotes a supportive, inclusive environment to advance the professional goals and aspirations of UC women in technology.
To fulfill this mission, the committee pursues initiatives at the universitywide level, leveraging and supporting the work of location-based Women in Technology (WIT) committees and partnering with other leadership and systemwide committees.
The TU Library collections includes several books published by the University of California Press in Berkeley, California.
The TU Library blog has recently featured some of the free distance learning online lecture classes offered at the University of California, Berkeley.
The University of California, Berkeley (also known as UC Berkeley) is a public research university in Berkeley, California.
In the 21st century, Berkeley has become one of the leading universities in producing entrepreneurs, and its alumni have founded or co-founded many companies worldwide, including Apple, Tesla, Intel, eBay, SoftBank, AIG, and Morgan Stanley.
In September 2012, The Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE) was formed. The Center is a resource hub and an operational catalyst for all internal campus-wide and external resources to advise, coordinate, and facilitate the University’s online education initiatives, ranging from credit and non-credit courses, to online degree programs and MOOC projects, including the MOOCLab initiative.
BRCOE’s new MOOCLab is a three-year research initiative to fund and develop Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as vehicles for pedagogical research in online education.
The moderator for the 17 July event will be Jill Finlayson, Director, Women in Technology Initiative, University of California.
Ms. Finlayson has mentored impressive technology leaders from the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-saharan Africa, Central Asia, and Pakistan through the State Department’s TechWomen program for over eight years, also participating in their delegation trips to deliver innovation, entrepreneurship, and mentoring talks and workshops. She is particularly interested in social entrepreneurship, open government, civic tech, startups, education, innovation, women’s rights, mentoring, tech for good, impact, and leadership.
Evolving standards
Last year, Ms. Finlayson told an online interviewer that the landscape has changed recently for women entrepreneurs:
The biggest win has to be awareness. We have enough data for people to see and understand how harmful microaggressions can be. We have studies that show discriminatory practices toward female academics and Venture Capitalists asking biased questions toward female founders—this data makes it easier to help people understand the challenges and make needed behavior and system changes.. Though the technical workplace may still have significant attrition for women, we’re seeing better and more informed policies that promote equitable participation. The notion that people “have to be a guy” is decreasing. Companies are placing more value on stereotypically “soft skills”—things like communication, collaboration, and global mindset, and they are devoting more resources to fostering inclusive leadership which will lead to a more level playing field… Mentorship is beneficial in a myriad of ways. We’re a great sounding board—it can be a bit lonely at the top, so having someone to bounce ideas off of is such an asset. Mentors offer valuable criticism, forcing you to either have a sound rationale or to pivot. It’s much easier to change course early before you invest a lot of time and money. Finally, we offer a network. Every day, I think about who I can connect my team with to inform their solution. We are your ultimate champions, and hopefully, our cumulative knowledge may help you bridge sectors.
All this to say that mentoring is also benefiting us! Mentors are able to feed off the dynamic energy of founders, while constantly learning from complicated startup challenges. It’s an opportunity for us to leverage hard-earned knowledge to help create concrete applications and to help founders achieve their potential and their vision. Founders have the same energy throughout the globe—you will feel at home in any startup space from in the world because they are filled with people trying to solve big problems. Anyone with the courage and excitement to build something from nothing is someone I want to work with.
On 17 July, the welcome speech at the event will be delivered by Dr. Diana Wu, Dean of the UC Berkeley Extension.
Dr. Wu has considerable experience in educational outreach. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Stanford University, followed by a master of arts degree in educational psychology and a doctoral degree in higher education from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
New concepts
As the dedicated webpage notes about the Virtual Work Place, New Leadership Skills, Distributed Team, and Artificial Intelligence seminar,
Covid-19 has caused visible and dramatic shifts in how we manage talent. Companies and their HR teams have been thrown into working from home, dealing with social crises, and helping teams of people embrace new technologies. While Covid-19 and racial injustices have brought many issues into sharp focus, the fact is that we were already in the midst of some very significant changes in our workforce, jobs, and management. This panel will help you answer:
Is “virtual” the new workplace? Do we bring some, none, or all staff back to the office? And if so, how would this work and when? How do we keep teams motivated and avoid burnout?
Why should we be having conversations about race and social justice in the workplace and how do you do that? How do we arm leaders with the emotional intelligence and practices to build belonging and align processes to be more fair and inclusive?
As HR becomes more complex, what role can automation and AI play in making it more efficient, effective, and equitable? What strategies can be employed to better ensure fairness and mitigate bias in AI-enabled HR? What are your responsibilities and liabilities when selecting or using AI in HR?
Learn from top practitioners about how to respond to pressing concerns and co-create not just a new normal, but a better normal.
Among the distinguished speakers will be Brandie Nonnecke, PhD, Founding Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) Policy Lab, UC Berkeley where she supports interdisciplinary tech policy research and engagement.
Dr. Nonnecke researches human rights at the intersection of law, policy, and emerging technologies with her current work focusing on issues of fairness and accountability in AI and computational propaganda and digital harassment campaigns on Twitter. Among her other activities, she investigates how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can support civic participation, improve governance and accountability, and foster economic and social development.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)