Data for Social Good and Sustainability  - HER+Data MCR - June 2020 Meetup
Channel: Her Plus Data Manchester
Date: 12/06/2020

HER+Data MCR is a community working to connect, inspire, support and empower the NW UK’s Women in Data through monthly meetups. For our June 2020 event, we teamed up with Open Data Manchester to showcase women working with data for social good and sustainability. 

Open Data Manchester advocates for a fairer world built on intelligent and responsible data use - and helps people, organisations and communities to make this happen - through advice, advocacy, events, research, support and training. 


Speakers:

10:00 - Hera Hussain (https://twitter.com/herahussain): Hera is the Founder of CHAYN (http://chayn.co) - a global volunteer-run project crowdsourcing resources on the web to address gender-based violence. Chayn has reached more than 360 000 people through its resources which are designed with survivors of abuse. Born in Scotland, raised in Pakistan and living in the UK, Hera knew from early on she wanted to empower women. Hera is a passionate believer in using the power of open source technology and open data to solve the world's pressing issues. When Hera isn’t running Chayn in her spare time, she works with governments and civil society to open datasets to fight corruption. Hera was on the Forbes 30 Under 30 and MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 list. [Presentation slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bIXEA86HESikb4r6Bgia5Xw1G9aSw6pirUeor5Ql-P4/edit?usp=sharing]

32:00 - Alice Larkin (https://twitter.com/AliceClimate): Alice is currently Head of the School of Engineering and is a researcher in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester (https://www.tyndall.manchester.ac.uk/). Alice trained as a physicist in Leeds, did her PhD in climate modelling at Imperial College, then worked in science communication. She returned to academia joining the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester in 2003 to research conflicts between climate change and energy policy. Her work on carbon budgets helped to shape the UK’s Climate Change Act and inclusion of aviation within policy frameworks. She became a Professor and Director of Tyndall Manchester in 2015, delivered a TED talk and was awarded a University ‘Researcher of the Year’ award in 2016. She has led large collaborative EPSRC projects on the Water-Energy-Food nexus and decarbonising shipping, and continues to work at the climate change-policy interface. She was Head of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester 2017 until 2019.

59:00 - Sophie Walker (https://twitter.com/Sophie_COO): Sophie is the COO and Co-Founder of Dsposal (https://www.dsposal.uk) a clean-tech company who along with its sister social enterprise Your Dsposal, is on a mission is to empower people to make better decisions with their resources and waste by increasing transparency and accountability to make a positive impact on our environment. She’s passionate about sustainability and draws on her varied background and experiences. She brings a fresh pair of eyes and breadth of experience to her new-found passion for the waste and resources industry. In her spare time she volunteers on the Tech for Good Live podcast and is a trustee for the charity Village Service Trust, which supports the health and community development in rural Tamil Nadu. She was voted joint 5th in the 2019 Resource Hot 100, is shortlisted for the Northern Power Women Outstanding Entrepreneur award 2020, is the secretary of the Waste Compliance Taskforce and is an alumna of the CSC Leaders Programme. She speaks internationally on waste, digitalisation, open data and open standards.


Anti-racist resources shared during the announcements:
- Scaffolding anti-racism resources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PrAq4iBNb4nVIcTsLcNlW8zjaQXBLkWayL8EaPlh0bc/preview?pru=AAABcp6uIFU*kPg_ZsMhEO7wjtW3XtnIvQ
- UK Actions and Resources for Black Lives Matter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15l-6-yWHC40ZBd7bmvp3GNgue7VkpH97yTCHThf7n7Y/edit
- Five Racist Anti-Racism Responses “Good” White Women Give to Viral Posts & The Only Kind of Response That’s Acceptable: https://www.katykatikate.com/the-blog/2020/5/26/5-racist-anti-racism-responses-good-white-women-give-to-viral-posts 


Support Diverse & Equal research and training initiatives to help identify the barriers to entry for black people in UK Tech, discover how to support black employees already working in the industry and get visibility on how Tech is impacting black lives:
- icantbreath by Founder Annette Joseph: https://link.medium.com/jVaZ1DGba7
- Diverse & Equal Tech NW GoFundMe for research and training initiatives: https://www.gofundme.com/f/diverse-and-equal-black-tech-gofundme


More information:
- HER+Data MCR Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/HER-Data-MCR/
- HER+Data MCR Twitter page: https://twitter.com/herplusdatamcr
- Open Data Manchester Website: http://www.opendatamanchester.org.uk/
- Open Data Manchester Twitter page: https://twitter.com/opendatamcr