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     Have you ever felt like an outsider in a group, professionally or otherwise? When joining a figure skating team at 10, I was told by the coach that I was too chubby, and he always compared me to other students to make me feel small. Figure skating focuses on not only skills but also who looks better in a tight, dazzling skating dress. I was devastated, but I did not give up. When everyone else on my team was enjoying their weekends, I was on the ice rink, falling and getting up on my own for a whole two years. I won second prize in the Asian Open Figure Skating trophy at the end. This experience shaped my personality profoundly.

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       Being persistent, focused, and positive have been deeply planted in my mind since I was 12 years old.

 

      I used to worked as a female engineer in a male-dominated traditional industry company and tried hard to break the invisible glass ceiling. Female workers in our company are considered less capable than male employees, receive lower salaries, and are almost next to impossible to get promoted to management level. It was very frustrating for me to be in our regular team meetings because I was the only female, and the rest of the team controlled the entire conversation. I was an outsider and somewhat invisible to them. However, I never give up. I strived to pass a selection process to be the corporate lecturer to teach Python and RPA techniques. I also conducted an AI project, and the general manager praised me for successfully reducing 20% steam consumption which benefits both the company and the environment. I thus earned myself an opportunity to expand the AI project to multiple business departments and promote digital transformation company-wide. I am deeply fascinated with data analytics and find that my knowledge is limited. Therefore, I decided to further pursue my expertise in data science with formal academic education in the UCLA and hope to contribute even more as a data scientist in the future.

 

       Before talking about my experience of humanizing smart technology, I like to ask one question: does a chubby girl deserve the opportunity to be in a figure skating competition? During my internship in 2014 and 2015, when asked to plan a website, others chose to make a shopping or product site, while I designed a social website emphasizing emotional interaction. I named it Anyface, encouraging all kinds of thoughts, races, and genders. Users can change the webpage showcase according to their moods, emotions, and personalities, personalizing their webpage through AI recommendations. Another case was a smart nursing drone, “Intelligent Mobile Nursing Device.” I designed it with a child-like appearance, aiming to provide companion and emotional support as well as effective monitoring and analysis to the elderly. Apart from this, when winning six innovation competitions from 2016 to 2018, I proposed solutions for reducing bicycle parking bias and lessening the pressure on the feet of office ladies. Inspired by these experiences, I deeply believe that the foundation of human technology lies in both data and empathy.

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       Working as an AI Engineer and Data Scientist, I gradually cultivated not only technical skills but also soft skills in data science: empathy, communication, and collaboration skills for data use. Based on the qualitative training in UX research and job experience, I can empathize with users and stakeholders and identify their needs and wants. I learned empathy to understand the story of data. Considering the context around data helps specify possible bias; therefore, identifying when and how data was collected was my first step in initiating an AI project. I cooperated closely with site engineers to ensure my findings matched their domain knowledge and experiences. I learned that a technical solution in isolation could not achieve ideal outcomes; instead, empathy and interpersonal skills are equally crucial for the success of data analytics projects.

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       I am passionate about helping others and have been aware of disadvantaged minorities’ issues since my youth. When entering middle school, I actively joined the volunteer group to care for the elderly in the nursing center, like accompanying them during holidays. During my freshman and sophomore years, I devoted time and effort to helping teenagers from broken families at a service organization. Most of them would break law and end up staying in reform facilities. We guided them with designed psychological activities and tried to help them return to normal life and education. Most surprisingly, a girl of the same age as me was already a mother of two children as a teenager. Since then, I am always thinking about improving the situation of disadvantaged minorities in society, and being a data scientist will allow me to find an effective solution with sufficient information to help them.

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       To answer my own question: does a chubby girl deserve the opportunity to be on the ice rink? Statistically, data is on my coach’s side, and a chubby girl has next to no chance in a figure skating competition. However, raw data does not consider human factors, and in my case: persistence, focus, and positivity prevailed, and I indeed broke the glass ceiling.

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       With my extensive background and experiences mentioned above, I am confident that I will bring unique values and contributions to your company. I've already quipped myself with the best and most advanced knowledge and education to face upcoming unknown glass ceilings or other challenges.