Slides From The Event:

Transcript:

Rita Chaturvedi: [00:00:00] Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's go to the next slide. So the dEI SIG has been part of FINOS for over two years now. However, we've seen a lot of momentum in the last six months or so, especially in 2024. And that's basically a result of greater engagement, new membership in the SIG, and a lot of encouragement and support from FINOS itself.

Basically, what is DEI SIG? It was kicked off in 2022, and the mission of this DEI SIG is to promote diversity within FINOS, but also in the broader financial industry, as well through the members who are participating. But part of FINOS. Why do we need a DEI SIG? I think it's self explanatory.

There's so much focus on diversity, equity and inclusion just across the board in the financial services industry as well as in other industries. And there are studies after studies that prove that diversity not only promotes the inclusivity and general sense of belongingness in society, but it is also impactful to the bottom line of the companies.

And therefore having a diversity SIG within FINOS was only a logical step. And we are very thankful to FINOS to have constructed this SIG within [00:01:30] within FINOS organization. In terms of our goals, we want to make sure that we represent FINOS at key industry events. We're supporting the FINOS Ambassador Program activities and at federated and partner events

we want to provide scholarship support for underrepresented groups, students and need based individuals in the FinTech community collaborate with FINOS projects including the Accessibility Project to drive inclusivity within the FINOS ecosystem and engage FINOS members. We have a team of, DEI experts to guide our work and improve the impact. That we can make within the FINOS community as well as outside of it. The key call to action here is basically for all of the FINOS members who have a diversity, equity, inclusion focused organization within their own companies to to bring some representation from that organization from their respective companies into this SIG so that we can take advantage of their expertise and their experience in this space to drive similar impact within FINOS community and through FINOS community as well.

We are working on developing a dedicated microsite as well for the FINOS DEI SIG. So that. Those are basically our goals. If you go to the next slide, there is some information on key [00:03:00] programming and call to action here. As I said, we have great momentum in 2024. There is a lot of programming that this DEI SIG is driving.

So first off we have the FINOS A11y Theme Builder Collaboration Summit hosted by Discover. on Global Accessibility Awareness Day on May 16 in Chicago, as well as virtual. The link to register is available here, so please do register if you're interested, and also pass on to your organizations for registration as well.

There is a FINOS Open Source in Finance meetup. It's hosted by our FINOS ambassador Paula Paul with Wellington Management on May 21st in Boston. This is going to be a great meetup. It's on the team of the some of the other meetups that we've had on similar lines in the past. So it's going to be a good yes, exactly.

So please do sign up and attend if you can.

The third one here is that the DEI SIG Addressing Bias in Software Engineering panel discussion at OSFF London on June 26, this is going to be led by none other than Rimma and some of the other SIG members as well as a panel Panelists of course good conversation. Please do attend if you [00:04:30] can.

And last but not the least, the DEI SIG is participating in a big way at the Grace Hopper Celebration this year in Philadelphia. The Grace Hopper Celebration is biggest diversity conference in technology space in the world, not just in the U. S. It's from October 8 to 11. What we are doing there is that our proposal for addressing bias and software engineering in the age of a I panel discussion has been accepted.

And again, Rimma is going to be leading this panel discussion. But we are also working on an Open source Day Programming. This is still in development, but our goal is to have a full day of programming, working with all of the other SIGs within FINOS ecosystem to provide awareness and opportunities for people to get engaged and get to know about what's going on within the FINOS space.

In terms of call to action again, we are working on developing FINOS' ambassador event series for DEI. So if you're interested in getting involved here, please do reach out. I already spoke about calling on all of the member organizations To get involved with us to bring in their diversity experts into the SIG to help us with creating greater impact in this space.

And also if you have offices in Philadelphia, we are looking to host a local DEI event during the Grace Hopper conference in [00:06:00] Philadelphia right at the beginning of the Grace Hopper celebration. for your attention. Monday, August, October 7th will be ideal. So if you do have a space please do reach out to us and we'll work with you on organizing something.

The how to get involved. There is a barcode here. Please scan it or reach out to myself Rimma or anybody else and our github Channel is also available to get involved.