MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, USA, November 30, 2020. Women in Localization (W.L.), the leading professional organization for women in the localization industry, is excited to announce that Appen, a global leader in high-quality training data for machine learning systems, is a Silver-level sponsor for 2020-2021.
Building a new organization and community starts at a grassroots level, with individuals and supporters volunteering time, expertise, and other resources. The launch of a formal sponsorship program with Appen enables W.L. to expand its global impact and establish a foundation for continued growth. Today, Women in Localization is a community of 28 chapters in 20 countries.
“We are proud to support Women in Localization, an organization that our employees engage with and is aligned to our company mission of diversity and inclusion,” said Kerri Reynolds, SVP of Crowd Sourcing Operations & HR at Appen. “Successful AI systems start with diverse and accurate training data annotated by the crowd. Our partnership is the foundation to building global, diverse crowd and employees.”
Appen is a strong supporter of Women in Localization with many team members volunteering time to mentor and support the organization. The platform provides an open dialogue for industry professionals to connect and support each other within each chapter as well as globally. W.L.’s global reach offers the depth of knowledge needed to support the over 180 languages spoken by Appen employees and contractors.
“Women in Localization’s mission is to foster a global community for the advancement of women and the localization industry. This strategic financial commitment from Appen will help to advance our mission to include even stronger programs and broader global geographic reach for our thousands of members, at a time and circumstance needed most,” said Allison McDougall, Women in Localization Board Member responsible for the Sponsorship Program. “We are delighted to have Appen on board and are grateful for the unique perspectives and contributions they will bring.”
The partnership between W.L. and Appen reflects Appen’s commitment to bringing and reflecting diverse perspectives in AI training data projects that result in unbiased products that work for everyone. Responsible training data relies on human annotation, expertise, and diversity to be successful. Solving for bias in AI requires including diverse perspectives from a crowd of data annotators at a global scale. Access to global expertise brings in diverse ideas, opinions, and values. It’s the people working on data annotation and collection that ensure AI works in the real world.
About Appen
Appen collects and labels images, text, speech, audio, video, and other data used to build and continuously improve the world’s most innovative artificial intelligence systems. Our expertise includes having a global crowd of over 1 million skilled contractors who speak over 180 languages and dialects, in over 70,000 locations and 130 countries, and the industry’s most advanced AI-assisted data annotation platform. Our reliable training data gives leaders in technology, automotive, financial services, retail, healthcare, and governments the confidence to deploy world-class AI products. Founded in 1996, Appen has customers and offices globally.
About Women in Localization
Women in Localization (W.L.) was founded in 2008 by Silvia Avary-Silveira, Eva Klaudinyova and Anna N. Schlegel, and is the leading professional organization for women in the localization industry with over 5,000 members globally.
Its mission is to foster a global community for the advancement of women and the localization industry. It aims to provide an open, collaborative forum where women can share expertise and experience and help each other move forward in their careers.
Started in the San Francisco Bay Area, W.L. has expanded its membership to include women across the globe, encouraging members to meet in other local geographies.