Judith Spitz
Founder of Break Through Tech, Former CIO at Verizon
SPEAKER FEE RANGE: $20,000–$30,000 [FEE NOTE]
TRAVELS FROM: New York
RELATED TOPICS: Artificial Intelligence, Future of Work, Innovation & Creativity, Women in Business, Women's Equality
Judith Spitz shares perspectives, lessons learned, and insights gained from her years as a female CIO leading a global, Fortune 10 technology organization as she challenges organizations to develop a culture of inclusive leadership and innovate in the ways they promote diversity in their technology organizations.
Judith Spitz, Ph.D. is the Executive Director and founder of Break Through Tech, a national initiative that propels women and underrepresented groups into higher education and careers in tech through curriculum innovation, career access and community building. She is a member of the Advisory Board of an AI company called ASAPP.
From 2005-2016, she was a senior vice president and CIO at Verizon. Crain’s named her to their 2019 list of Notable Women in Tech. The NY Business Journal listed her as a 2018 Woman of Influence. In 2017, she received the Above & Beyond Award for Outstanding Women in Business from City & State New York. InfoWorld named her a 2009 CTO 25 award winner. Her passion is driving programs that address the urgent need for more women in technology. She speaks frequently about this, about gender-based algorithmic bias and the future of work in an AI-enabled digital world.
From 2005-2016, she was a senior vice president and CIO at Verizon. Crain’s named her to their 2019 list of Notable Women in Tech. The NY Business Journal listed her as a 2018 Woman of Influence. In 2017, she received the Above & Beyond Award for Outstanding Women in Business from City & State New York. InfoWorld named her a 2009 CTO 25 award winner. Her passion is driving programs that address the urgent need for more women in technology. She speaks frequently about this, about gender-based algorithmic bias and the future of work in an AI-enabled digital world.
- The Gender Equality Challenge in Tech: How Industry and Academia Need to Do Things Differently to Get Things Done
Hardly a week goes by when there isn't an article written about need for gender equality in tech. The situation is even worse for women in AI where the impact and evidence of gender inequity is not just in the workforce but in gender-based algorithmic bias which is both demonstrable and growing. One thing is clear: in spite of our efforts, the numbers are not moving fast enough. That's why Dr. Judith Spitz, former CIO at Verizon, is leading a national initiative called Break Through Tech to propel more women into tech. Join Dr. Spitz as she talks about her unique ecosystem approach to activate and align both the supply side and the demand side of the equation. Spitz talks about what's working, what isn't working and recommends specific and innovative steps that companies can take to move the needle on diversity and inclusion. - Leadership is a Team Sport: How Women in Tech Can and Should Make the Choice to Lead
The ‘smartest guy in the room’ model of leadership may work in some environments but it is not necessarily the formula for success in the digital age. Understanding that leadership is really about the team and not about the leader is one of the many lessons that Dr. Judith Spitz learned during her leadership journey from entry level member technical staff at Verizon to CIO for one of Verizon’s three business units. Join Dr. Spitz as she talks about how to be a rocket booster for the careers of those around you while at the same time driving your own career forward, about ‘radical candor’ and why it matters, about the many different styles of leadership that all have a place in the tech world, and about women in tech finding their own leadership voices. - Leadership and Followership in the Digital Age: At the intersection of Biology, Psychology and Culture
To be a leader – visionary, transformational, operational or any other kind – requires that you understand not only your own leadership style but also understand why people have followed others from the beginning of time, what your individual team is looking for in their leader and the unique demands of the digital economy. As both an academic and practitioner, Dr. Judith Spitz learned from both theory and decades of practice as a senior executive and leader in technology. Drawing from her experience as a woman coming up the leadership ranks, she talks about how great leaders must understand all three dimensions of the leadership challenge and then bring along the next generation of inclusive leaders for the digital age. - AI, Digital Transformation and the Future of Work: The Value Proposition at the Intersection of People and Machines
The future of work will be built on platforms that blur the boundaries between human-centered and machine-enabled work. These AI-native platforms will enable a powerful collaboration between people and machines and drive a radical increase human productivity – unlike anything we've seen in the last 40 years of investment in business transformation. But just as we had to learn how to deliver cloud-native and mobile-native apps in order to capture transformational value, the same is true about deploying AI into our businesses. Based on her tenure as a CIO at Verizon and Advisor to an AI company, Spitz discusses what it means to deliver AI-native business platforms in order to capture the promise of AI and the value proposition of digital transformation. - Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmic Bias and Why Diversity Matters More Than Ever
The longstanding promise of AI is finally becoming real. But just as algorithmically-based decision making becomes more pervasive there is ample evidence that these algorithms – which supposedly allow decisions that are free from 'human bias' – are in fact showing significant signs of bias themselves – racial bias, gender bias, socioeconomic bias and in some cases just poor decision making. Spitz is the founder of a nationwide initiative to propel more women and other underrepresented groups into tech and a former CIO at Verizon. She will share her insights about how we can continue to develop and deploy this technology while avoiding or at least detecting these issues and how diversity in tech many be our first line of defense against algorithmic bias.
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