12 minute read
Digital Innovators
By David Mckay Wilson
Meet three Choate alumni who are using digital innovation to create communications and social networking tools. When they graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall some 15–20 years ago, their current jobs in the A.I. and data science space didn’t exist; they were pioneers on the cusp of new technologies and new career paths. Here they share how the world of artificial intelligence – machines that think on their own – can help to create ways to forge a partnership between people and machines, especially during this uncertain time of social distancing.
USING A.I. TO HELP NONPROFITS SUCCEED
Gerard McGeary ’00 has put his business acumen to work in the tech sector, selling cloud-based systems to retailers, developing strategies for an online lender, and raising seed capital for a startup company that uses artificial intelligence to improve decision making. Never has the use of digital technology been more critical to nonprofits than during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Gerard is Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships for Catchafire, a Manhattan-based company that links volunteers around the world to nonprofits in need of help for a wide range of projects. Says Gerard, “Our virtual skill-based volunteer platform and program was perfected during good times and is uniquely situated to meet the needs of nonprofits during the coronavirus crisis. We have created bundles of specific projects that are responsive to the expressed need of our nonprofit users in this moment, including running virtual programs, organizing virtual fundraisers, writing work-from-home policies, and remote organizational management. At the same time, we are providing a way for the many professionals who now find themselves working from home and trying to find out how to help their communities to connect to organizations on the front lines of keeping people afloat.”
“It’s rewarding to get a chance to make an impact on change-makers in the world,” says Gerard, who lives on Manhattan’s Lower East Side with his wife, Sarah Gonzalez. “If I’m successful, that means a group of nonprofits have more resources and support than they had before, and that will allow them to be more successful in their programs.”
Founded a decade ago, Catchafire has a roster of nonprofits, with support from foundations, that provides access to a database which will connect these nonprofits with a network of about 7 million volunteer professionals worldwide who are looking for volunteer projects.
Gerard McGeary ’00, Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships for Catchafire.
–GERARD MCGEARY ’00
Those projects are classified as “capacity building,” an often-neglected part of a nonprofit’s business plan that typically isn’t supported by foundation grants. Projects could include writing a strategic plan, designing a brochure, developing a marketing strategy, or creating a social media campaign.
“In our model, the nonprofits won’t pay a dime for our service, and they’ll have a programmatic team to support them during the experience,” Gerard says.
Catchafire uses artificial intelligence to match the professional with a certain skill-set to a nonprofit looking for that expertise for their project. Where the nonprofit or professional is based is not a major factor because so much of the work can be done o -site.
The algorithm that matches the nonprofit with the volunteer is a vast improvement for both parties.
Gerard, who grew up in Avon, Conn., came to Choate for his fourth form year. He played soccer and basketball and ran track, with his 4 x 100 relay team holding the School record for several years. New England championship banners from his soccer and track teams’ sixth form seasons still hang in the Johnson Athletic Center.
He recalls the Model Congress program in one of his history classes that passed bills on gay marriage and ended the Cuba trade embargo. The School’s emphasis on public engagement, along with his parents’ involvement in civic a airs, remains with him today.
Gerard’s journey to Catchafire began with undergraduate studies at Harvard, where he majored in government. He was an associate consultant at Boston Consulting Group for two years, a field director for Dan Malloy’s 2006 Connecticut gubernatorial campaign, and earned an M.B.A. at the Yale School of Management.
He spent four years at J.P. Morgan Securities, obtaining financing for governments in the municipal bond market before making the leap into the tech sector in 2014. He has witnessed how technology can increase access in so many areas – from low-cost communications on mobile devices to the ability to obtain credit or investment opportunities through new financial technology products.
Dr. Stephen Haskins ’00, the best man at Gerard’s wedding who lives a few blocks from him, said Gerard’s latest job is a good fit for his friend of 23 years.
“It’s right up his alley,” says Stephen. “He’s able to connect large foundations with big pockets to little organizations trying to make a difference.”
Emily Reid ’05 speaks about 10110 AI4All’s work at Civic Hall’s five year anniversary event.
DEVELOPING AN A.I. CURRICULUM FOR DIVERSE AUDIENCES
Emily Reid ’05 has seen the promise of artificial intelligence, the rapidly growing field that can suggest movies you’d like on Netflix, navigate cars without a driver, and help diagnose what ails you. But she’s also seen the flipside of this branch of computer science, with underrepresentation by women and minorities and technologies that may have biases built into the algorithms that drive the software.
For example, Emily says, studies have found that certain facial recognition software was almost 100 percent accurate for light-skinned males but had an error rate of about 20 percent for dark-skinned females. Another study found that algorithm-based risk assessments for those charged with crimes was biased against African Americans. “We live in an imperfect world, and that can be reflected in the data,” she says. “The program could be designed without thinking about a diverse set of users in mind.”
As Vice President of Open Learning for AI4All, Emily is developing interdisciplinary curriculums for high school classrooms, after-school programs, and online learning to introduce a diverse mix of students to artificial intelligence – with both its promise and pitfalls. She came to the nonprofit after working for four years in cybersecurity at Mitre Corp., a federally funded research center, where she helped develop protocols for the Department of Defense, the NSA, and NATO.
Spreading the good word about computer science to a broad range of students reminds Emily of her experience at Choate Rosemary Hall, where she excelled in advanced math and science courses, inspired by teachers such as David Quarfoot, whose calculus course she took in her sixth form year.
Nevertheless, Emily never considered taking a computer science course, where most of the seats were filled with boys. She majored in math at Tufts University, and then earned a master’s in computer science at Columbia.
Even at Tufts, where she took a required computer science course, there were only three women among 30 students in the class.
She later learned of a concept called the Imposter Syndrome. That’s a psychological e ect experienced by members of a minority group who tend to downplay their abilities because they don’t feel part of a larger group.
–EMILY REID ’05
“Computer science wasn’t even on my radar,” recalls Emily, a Wallingford day student who co-captained the girls cross-country team and developed her creative side performing in plays. “It seems to me like the guys had been programming at home, and it was all new to me.”
Gender diversity in Emily’s computer science classes improved at Columbia, where women comprised up to 30 percent of her classmates. There, she delved deeply into natural language processing, the branch of artificial intelligence that allows devices to recognize one’s voice.
Many of those women were from overseas. At Columbia, she joined a fledging organization called Girls Who Code, and later worked for two years as its Director of Education, during a time when its programming grew from 19 summer programs and a few pilot clubs, to 97 summer programs and 3,000 clubs.
In 2018, Emily joined AI4All, which was previously launched at Stanford University by a doctoral student in A.I. with an idea to create more access for underrepresented people. That year, AI4All summer programs educated 150 people of color, young women, and low-income high school students. By 2019, its summer programs had expanded to 11 university campuses.
Recent Choate graduate Rebekah Agwunobi ’19 attended an AI4All summer program. Says Bekah, “There, I was exposed to a brilliant community of women and was able to approach problems I had never seen before, such as applying natural language processing to disaster relief. This was crucial to my overall development, because it helped me consider computer science as a viable major that could still integrate my passion for supporting underrepresented groups.”
She adds, “I was so inspired by AI4All, I helped direct a coding competition in New York City called ByteHacks, the largest hackathon for high school and collegiate women in New York. This opportunity, as well as the support system I gained through AI4All, made me want to pursue computer science and anthropology majors at Columbia. I was so grateful to connect with Emily over lunch and see the myriad Choate alumni working to support women who want to pursue STEM-related fields.”
Emily is developing programs for high school curriculums that would help integrate A.I. in computer science programs without the need for a student to know programming or advanced math. Another would use A.I. in English classes to analyze social issues.
“Our mission is to increase diversity and inclusion in A.I. for high school and college students,” says Emily, who lives in Manhattan with her husband, Clement. “There are going to be a lot of jobs in the field, so we want our students to think about the ethics and impact of artificial intelligence at the beginning of their A.I. journey.”
TOLERATING AMBIGUITY LEADS TO BUSINESS SUCCESS
Six months into his second tech startup, Austin Ogilvie ’05 thrives, with a nimble business mind and a healthy tolerance for risk, developing products that resonate with corporate clients.
“The unknown is very exhilarating,” says Austin, whose latest company, Laika, is based in Manhattan. “It’s rewarding to work on real-world problems with a team, to see how your work impacts the business – for better or worse.”
Laika, which Austin launched in 2019 with two partners and $3 million from investors, has found a market among startup businesses. Laika’s software suite keeps them up-todate with ever-changing requirements regarding the protection of customer financial data and health information, as well as compliance with international accounting standards.
Austin knows first-hand how problems with compliance can stall entrepreneurs when they want to sell to major corporate clients.
“I can rattle o deal after deal I lost for not being a credible counter partner,” he says. “I remember wanting to sell software to Intuit, but it took 190 days to close that deal.”
Laika is his latest venture in a career that began in 2009, while studying at the University of Virginia. He had an internship with a startup company in Washington, DC, where he worked alongside its three founders in a Georgetown townhouse.
“That’s when I fell in love with startups,” says Austin, who lives in Brooklyn, and finds time to kayak in the Berkshires and rock climb in New York’s Shawangunk Mountains. “I saw them figuring out the path forward for their business. In the early stages, it can be relentless and ruthless. It’s all about prioritization – pruning the bush, eliminating all that’s superfluous.”
After graduation, Austin joined a company called OnDeck, which underwrote business loans with artificial intelligence. The company’s software engineers had developed a program that analyzed a company’s credit worthiness by analyzing its digital footprint through data scraped from the Internet.
“It was applied machine learning in its purest form,” says Austin.
Austin Ogilvie ’05, Founder at Laika.
He left OnDeck in 2013 to launch his first enterprise, which he named “yhat.” The name was a in-joke among data science nerds like Austin – it’s the term for the line of best fit in a regression analysis. His company solved a problem that had bedeviled software developers, who would build a software model on their own computer but would have to recreate the code when it was launched on the web or a mobile platform. Yhat’s software allowed developers to integrate complex business logic through a mobile app without rewriting the code.
Among his company’s seed investors was Ed Sim, P ’20, whose company, Boldstart Ventures, invests in tech startups.
“Austin can see around corners and has an incredible product mind,” he says. “He can understand where a market is headed, and then build product to meet those needs. He is relentless and always curious, looking to learn and grow as much as possible.”
Five years later, a corporate suitor came a-calling. Alteryx, a data science company, found yhat’s software a good fit for its business model. It made an o er, and Austin accepted.
“We had no intention of selling, but it was a good deal, and we merged forces,” he says.
After helping with the transition for a year, Austin needed a break. He left Alteryx on what he called “a bit of a walkabout.” He kite-surfed in Barbados, visited Chernobyl in Ukraine, explored Uzbekistan and rented a Winnebago to tour Scotland.
Then he met Sam Li, a former computer engineer at Goldman Sachs and Google who had a heart for startup ventures. They talked about the trials and tribulations they’d seen in the startup world with the issue of compliance creating major obstacles to growth.
They launched Laika in June 2019, now have 13 employees, and exceeded their business targets by a good margin in the fourth quarter of 2020.
It looks like Austin has his next big thing. “You have to know how to tolerate ambiguity,” he says. “If you are joining a startup, you won’t be paid all in cash commensurate with what you’d make at a big established firm. As long as you are getting paid, and the business is capitalized enough to keep the lights on, the equity upside is quite extraordinary, especially at the earliest stage.”
–Austin Ogilvie ’05
David McKay Wilson is a freelance writer based in New York.
