It’s been a busy and productive time for FINOS’ DEI SIG!
Authors: Rimma Perelmuter & Karl Moll, FINOS
The activities kicked off with FINOS’ DEI SIG Co-Chair Rita Chaturvedi moderating the OSFF 2024 keynote panel on ‘Advancing Diversity in Open Source: A Journey on Inclusion, Innovation and Authentic Self-Discovery’ with fellow DEI SIG Co-chair Sérgio Bettencourt of Citi and Jaya Sehgal of Morgan Stanley. The panelists shared personal experiences for fostering an inclusive work environment and leveraging their identities for personal and professional growth, with the ultimate goal of inspiring a more diverse and equitable future in open source.
FINOS was selected to host a critical dialogue on the 'Practical Steps to Tackling Bias in Software Engineering in Age of AI' at the iconic Grace Hopper Celebration 2024 – the world's largest annual gathering of women and non-binary individuals in technology.
Moderated by FINOS’ VP of Strategic Growth and DEI team lead Rimma Perelmuter, our exceptional panelists Professor Sorelle Friedler, FINOS DEI Co-Chair and distinguished engineer Paula Paul and Enterprise CTO at Microsoft Prachi Kasodhan representing FS; technology; academia and open source shared the raison d'être for baking Responsible AI into software development and industry best practice. As AI becomes ubiquitous, the panel explored the business benefits, responsible AI processes and regulatory imperatives key to ensuring fairness and inclusivity in AI systems for financial services. They emphasised the importance of aligning organisational values to good governance; asking the right questions for conscious adoption of AI; testing and thoughtful use case selection; diverse teams and the interplay between innovation and regulation as key pillars. While we missed Peter Smulovics’ live contribution, we appreciated his various inputs into the importance of inclusive AI systems and data sets representative of diverse user needs and society at large.
FINOS was excited to host the Financial Services focus for the GHC 2024 virtual Open Source Day – programming a number of illuminating panels and fireside chats to highlight the seminal opportunities and work of the FS OS Community to aspiring technologists and those seeking new challenges keen to learn about what we do.
Our Community leaders highlighted their personal journeys into open source; the benefits of project collaboration & community impact; career opportunities; the unique relationship between financial services and open source; and the organizational opportunities that open source has unlocked.
Highlights from the day included an engaging discussion between FINOS Executive Director Gabriele Columbro and Chair of the Board Madeleine Dassule to set the tone for the day with an introduction to FINOS and highlights from their paths into the Open Source world from diverse backgrounds and experiences. A theme recurring throughout the day was how participating in open source opened up new opportunities for individuals by engaging with new communities and creating a platform to showcase different skill sets in passion projects which simultaneously solved problems.
The Main Stage included a panel on OpenRegTech (Jane Gavronsky, Eleanor Hsu, Claudia Caba, with Elspeth Minty moderating) and a phenomenal presentation from Chanel Crawford titled “Non Technical Contributions and Why They Matter,” followed by a Fireside Chat with Sitija Sarkar and Karl Moll.
The Accessibility Track focused on giving participants hands-on experience with creating GitHub Issues and other involvement with the A11y Theme Builder project. Workshop hosts included:
Paula Paul and Brittany Istenes were key in programming while Karl Moll hosted the day - there were 6 hours of scheduled programming with around 25 FINOS community members participating across a Main Stage, an Accessibility Track focused on A11y Theme FINOS Project Showcase Track included GitProxy, OSR, CCC, InnerSource, DevOps Automation, and more. Presenters included:
We had a small but global (women & non-binary) audience, nearly 100% retention throughout the day (~5 hours on a Friday afternoon!), & 82% of attendees expressed interest in learning more about how to participate in FINOS/Open Source going forward.
Attendees were invited to participate in the upcoming FINOS Office Hours (Nov. 1) to brainstorm which projects they might be interested in joining, and how best they can get involved!
A big thank you to all of our participants for your time and energy! We encourage you to join in planning similar events by joining the next DEI SIG meeting (details below).
👉 We encourage our members to get involved in the FINOS DEI SIG: diversity-inclusion-committee@finos.org and contribute to expanding leadership opportunities, prioritize diverse talent development and ensure inclusivity across FINOS projects, events, and software development.
🔥 Join our AI Readiness SIG to develop and operationalize Governance frameworks, policies and tools for the effective, safe, trustworthy and compliant deployment of generative AI technologies for Financial Services.