DATA ETHICS 4 ALL

Joseph Geldman, Wadham College, Final year undergraduate, BA English Language and Literature, Remote working

Work Projects

From my first interview, I was very

impressed by the ambition of the

DataEthics4All team and particularly their

founder, Shilpi. I was initially tasked by Shilpi

with working on two fundraising and

advertising campaigns which are important

to DataEthics4All's future: the organisation's education pledge, to provide free STEM

tutoring to five million students; and the AI DIET WORLD business-to-business event and

conference, due to be held online in October.

Before this, however, I brought some of my own projects to the table by suggesting an

update to some areas of the DataEthics4All website, which I had found a little bit confusing

at first. Shilpi accepted my suggestions and I simplified and redrafted some of the website

content to improve the user experience. I also worked on producing a professional 'style

guide' for DataEthics4All, setting out guidelines for future content releases and establishing

a colour scheme for the website content and videos I would work on in the following weeks.

In the second week, my focus moved to creating video content to advertise the AI DIET

World event, during which I produced four short informational videos (starting in Adobe

Spark, and finishing in Canva when Spark proved too irritating to use). For these videos I had

to write a script, gather appropriate internet stock footage, and finally star in my very own

voice-over. Shilpi and I brainstormed for a bit, and we had the idea of pitching the Career

Fair aspect of the AI DIET World event directly to students and universities.

Accordingly, the last two weeks of my internship mostly involved emailing universities and

pitching the event to them by offering free invitations to students to the event. The team

supported me in this endeavour by giving me access to the official communication channels:

the team website, YouTube channel, and Handshake and Medium accounts. We also made

headway with some attempts to directly engage the community through the online

platform, though these were less successful. In any case, though, the breadth of this

internship experience was the most rewarding aspect and I particularly appreciate the trust

that Shilpi and her team placed in my skills and my ideas.

Daily Life

Because my internship took place remotely, I

decided to treat it in much the same way as I

treated working at Oxford during my final

year, where I had a comparative lack of

structured activities. I had feedback meetings

with Shilpi three times a week, lasting

between fifteen minutes and one hour, during which we discussed both the work we were

doing, and the aims of DataEthics4All more generally.

During these sessions Shilpi was also an excellent mentor and provided a great deal of

useful advice on subjects related to advertising and marketing, and was knowledgeable

about everything from the productive use of LinkedIn to the importance of clear "calls to

action" in advertising.

Lasting Impressions

DataEthics4All proved to be an exceptionally friendly workplace. I enjoyed the diversity of

projects and the fact that I was able to pursue my own interests and approaches, with a

team always present to support me if I needed guidance. It was rewarding to be part of an

organisation which is so clearly committed to aspirational change in the world.

The community at DataEthics4All is welcoming and offers many opportunities for members

of all backgrounds to engage. As a collective, it has a clear mission statement and set of

commitments which are continually engaged with. This made it a fulfilling place both to

work and to meet new people. I do not know if I will pursue a career in the area of data

ethics, but I have had some ideas about working in spheres such as education and policy,

and it has been extremely useful to see how an activist organisation maps out its goals and

works towards them.