The mountain village in New Zealand where Nikki McLay lives and works on artificial intelligence (AI) is called Te Aroha, the literal translation in English is ‘The Place of Love’.
Nikki spent her formative years north of Auckland in a small beach house on the shore of the Mahurangi Peninsula. As co-Founder of IVOW and Women in Voice ANZ, she’s responsible for AI partnerships and has helped lead global innovation projects in collaboration with Topcoder, Microsoft, Soul Machines and AI for Good. Read her story here.

Happy Holidays from all of us at IVOW! Despite its roadblocks, 2020 was a year of accomplishments as we helped our partners cultivate new data ecologies with a focus on culture. Our aim is to fill the gap of online content for underrepresented groups and cultures –both in availability and bias.
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This year has allowed us to grow our relationships in the industry and we are thankful for the contributions of our collaborators and supporters — especially Women in AI, KiwiTech, WeWork Labs, IBM Netherlands, Microsoft, Topcoder, XPrize, ITU, and Cooley LLP. Each shares our passion to make AI and data more culturally aware and inclusive.

One of the largest gaps in designing for new frontiers in AI is the lack of knowledge of social sciences and deep learning from our heritage and traditions. At IVOW, we are focusing on creating better data ecologies that account for culture and history.
Learn about our top 5 accomplishments in 2020 here!

Super cool feature on our work and efforts via Korea IT Times. Check it out.