I am a mother of two daughters, an AI Engineer at heart interested in hacking and building GenAI, and I am passionate about guiding responsible and secure AI adoption and transformation. My role at Solita is the Product Owner of AI Empowerment in our GenAI Studio. That means I am in a team of dedicated and motivated people with whom we support our organisation and people to understand using artificial intelligence (AI) wisely through upskilling, frameworks, tools, direct support and materials. And they, in turn, help our customers create value with AI.
The potential (and risks) of AI pulled me into the IT world
I started my career with a PhD in education, focusing on figuring out why some succeed. The focus of that study was on graduating fast, but it did start my path of understanding expertise. During the PhD time, I taught statistical methods and participated in other research projects, also after my PhD, so I had a lot of experience working with data and analytics. I also did project management and learned to get complicated things done efficiently.
I had my first daughter in 2013 and second in 2017. In between, I was in a startup that aimed to improve education in the rural parts of India through small raspberry pi servers and tablets. We had training centers in orphanages and schools. We had about 25 centers when I started, and when I stopped working there, we had about 400 centers, also in schools. During this time, I got more involved in the IT side of things and development, which re-ignited my passion for working with numbers and analytics. I decided to change professions to IT and especially into AI for two reasons.
- Firstly, it was the most complex and interesting thing around that had the potential to change our societies, workplaces, and lives.
- Secondly, that was the time AI started making big headlines with ethical problems. The COMPAS algorithm used in the US for predicting the risk of re-offending was discovered to be discriminating. Apple and Amazon had issues with discrimination in their algorithms as well, and Microsoft had to unplug their Tay bot after being online for only 16 hours.
So I needed to choose whether I would stay on the sidelines watching this technological field develop or jump in and focus on trustworthy AI and implement that on a technical level. I decided to jump in.
However, it isn’t a field that is easy to enter, so my route wasn’t direct. I got a job as the main Developer of Moodle at the University of Turku, which then helped me take the next step into IT by joining Fellowmind, building data pipelines and platforms. During this time, I did my second degree, which was a Master of Engineering in artificial intelligence and data analytics. Doing the degree helped me get into machine learning engineering at Fellowmind.
Two and half years ago, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse, and I joined the Solita Turku office and data science team. I was in that role for almost two years before being selected in the current one as the Product Owner of AI Empowerment at the GenAI Studio, allowing me to fully utilise everything I’ve learned throughout my career.
Changing professions isn’t always easy. It requires starting again from a junior position and accepting that pretty much everyone around you knows more than you. It requires being able to talk about your expertise in the language of the new profession. And there’s a lot of learning, networking, and building to be able to do this transformation. I got support and mentoring to help me with this, and I recommend this for everyone else on a similar journey.
I ended up in my dream role
The current role allows me to use all my expertise, from AI security, skills and competence building, project management, data analytics and everything AI systems and people need to succeed. It is, quite frankly, my dream role.
The focus of supporting succeeding with AI, on responsible and safe adoption and transformation it involves, is so broad it allows a lot of different things from training Solitans and customers on the security of AI, to looking at ISO certification technical controls, to hacking GenAI, to ethical principles and AI governance. I have always been keen to learn new things, and in this role, the list of things to learn is delightfully never-ending.
A lot of my work is communication and people. I am responsible for a team, and I work as a part of another team. I communicate with business units and experts across the organisation and also outside of it. And I do a lot of speaking engagements, which take me to meet new people. I also aim to mentor others. Last year I was a mentor for Women in AI and this year I am one for Women4Cyber Finland. And I was just chosen in the list of KärkinAIset of the AI Finland network, which is a great honour!
The best thing about IT is the constant development and change. The technology and the regulatory landscape keep changing. It enables constant experimentation and playing with new things. Both are very important for continual skill development, understanding the fundamentals of the field of AI, and the complexities of it. And these complexities of AI then allow us to solve beautifully complicated issues.
This change is also a challenge. It isn’t easy to feel that one is up to speed. This feeling is strengthened by needing to stay somewhat up to speed on two industries, AI and cybersecurity, and especially at the intersection of them. I do struggle with my internal impostor syndrome telling me that there is so much more I could learn or don’t know yet. That’s why colleagues are so very important. I have been very fortunate with the people I work with. I admire them as experts, but who also recognise the same challenge.
It has been repeatedly noticed that diverse teams create better results. I see this myself as well. We have such a wide array of people from various backgrounds looking at AI from different angles. The conversations we have are what make my working days truly fascinating. However, there is still a lot to be done. We need more viewpoints, and we need to make sure the field is welcoming different kinds of people from different backgrounds and that we are able to identify the expertise without biases.
Rooted, growing, and making a difference
The list of things I would like to learn is too long to write and it’s constantly changing. Right now, I am fascinated in hacking generative AI models as that is one of the ways to learn where it works and where it doesn’t and why.
In my free time, I built a bot for a cybersecurity conference, Disarray, which I was organising last autumn. The bot was used in the capture the flag competition also in Disobey, and I plan on making more levels for that. I am also very curious and exploring how to utilise AI in areas where high security is a requirement. For my role, I am also looking into the possibilities of AI in creating more engaging learning experiences for Solitans.
I feel like I’m in the right place now. I’m still moving, learning, adapting, and making a difference, but my big process of changing professions now feels complete. So, going forward, it isn’t so much travelling as getting to know the landscape of where I’ve arrived.
Would you like to work here? Take a look at our open positions.