Refactored CEO Ram Katamaraja Invited as Panel Speaker at World Bank Group
Colaberry Inc, the creator of the award-winning Refactored platform, has been invited to speak at the World Bank Group in San Francisco, CA. The event will bring together Silicon Valley-based leaders in the education space to reflect on the recent trends toward skills and job acquisition. Panelists will discuss innovations related to boosting individuals’ and firms’ ability to adapt and thrive given the changing nature of work. – as well as new solutions to traditional approaches.
Background:
- The World Bank Group is prioritizing regional reforms and investment to ensure that people, firms, and governments are prepared for the future of work in Africa
- Digital technology adoption which is poverty-reducing and inclusive can boost firm-level productivity as well as new strategies to tackle persistent unemployment and informality in the region
- As a part of the Digital Moonshot for Africa 2030 initiative, the World Bank Group has set targets around Digital Skills: i) that all 15-year-old students have basic digital skills competencies; that there are 100,000 annual graduates in advanced digital skills programs
Date and Time: On April 4, 2019, the World Bank Group (WBG) will host a panel discussion in San Francisco at the Intercontinental Hotel SF Mark Hopkins from 4:00 – 5:45 P.M.
The Audience: 25 high-level World Bank Group staff from the AFR region.
Panel Speakers
Ram Dhan Yadav Katamaraja, Founder / CEO of Refactored.ai
Refactored.ai won MIT SOLVE’s global challenge in the category of Work of the Future, the General Motors Prize for Advanced Technologies, and The McGovern Foundation prize for Artificial Intelligence for Betterment of Humanity. Refactored.ai is selected as a finalist for Jobs For the Future’s (JFF) $1 Billion Wage Gain Challenge, which is supported by Schmidt Futures. Ram is driven by the mission to reduce inequality and promote career advancement for all by providing access to skill development and career pathway opportunities critical to success in the future of work. Up to 800 million global workers will lose their jobs by 2030 and be replaced by automation (MGI), making his mission more urgent than ever. Ram believes that there is a need to create innovative skill development platforms from the ground up that have “inclusivity” and “equal opportunity” at their core.
Diarietou Gaye, WBG Director Strategy and Operations, Africa Region
Stephane Kasriel, CEO, Upwork
Heather Gaddoniex, VP of Marketing Samasource
Parul Gupta, Co-founder, Springboard
Rich Qiu, SVP Global Business Development, Udemy
Discussion Topics: include the potential for technology to boost capabilities needed for the new economy in the following areas:
- A platform for digital skills acquisition
- Digital job-matching platforms to orient changing skills demand with current skills existing in the job market
- Social protection for workers in an evolving digitized gig economy
Company Descriptions
Upwork is the largest global online freelancing platform in 180 countries where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely. Upwork allows clients to interview, hire, and work with freelancers and agencies through the company’s platform. There are twelve million registered freelancers and five million registered clients on the platform, with offerings of over 5,000 skills across more than 70 categories of work.
Samasource started in 2008 as the first Impact Sourcing company in East Africa. Its goal was, and still is, to equally distribute opportunity in the digital economy and pay workers a living wage. Samasource has grown into a training data powerhouse, lifting over 50,000 people out of poverty. 25% of the Fortune 50 trust Samasource to deliver turnkey, high-quality training data and validation for the world’s leading AI technologies. From pilots to multi-year projects, Samasource securely trains and validates computer vision and NLP models. It uses human judgment to transform natural language data into valuable training sets for algorithms and delivers high-quality training data and validation for computer vision use cases.
Springboard offers online, project-based courses with 1-1 mentorship and placement support to help people get jobs in new economy professions. Springboard courses cover in-demand digital skills like Data Science, Design, Digital Marketing, Cybersecurity, etc. To date, Springboard has served 10,000+ learners in 100+ countries around the world and growing.
Udemy.com is an online learning platform with over 100K courses, 30M students, 42K instructors, and 190M course enrollments in over 50 languages. It is aimed at professional adults. Unlike academic massive open online course (MOOC) programs which are driven by traditional collegiate coursework, Udemy uses content from online content creators to sell for profit. Udemy provides tools that enable users to create a course, promote it, and earn money from student tuition charges. Udemy has also made a special effort to attract corporate trainers seeking to create coursework for employees of their company
If you would like to learn more about the World Bank Group, visit their website.
About Refactored.ai
Refactored.ai develops today’s workforce for tomorrow’s workplace. Refactored.ai’s on-demand, reskilling platform provides a scalable solution to keep workforce skills current amid rapid technological advancement. Through a learn-by-doing approach, soft skills development, virtual apprenticeships, and mentor support, learners can immediately grasp and apply critical in-demand skills throughout all stages of their careers. Refactored.ai has impacted the lives of over 5,000 users; approximately 70 percent coming from under-represented populations. Refactored.ai removes barriers and ensures that everyone – regardless of age, race, income, or current occupation – has the opportunity to succeed in the future of work.
Refactored.ai’s interactive, on-demand data training platform provides a scalable solution to keep workforce skills current and relevant amid rapid technological advancement.
The Refactored platform offers unlimited opportunities to develop agile, adaptable talent and data-thinkers, grasp and immediately apply AI concepts and skills, and build high-performing data science teams. Refactored.ai also offers the critical transitional steps required to seamlessly convert to an AI-powered organization.
As a team of passionate data, scientists committed to making a social impact, we firmly believe that innovation and technology should bring people together; it should not create larger divides and opportunity gaps. Refactored.ai will ensure that everyone has the opportunity to succeed – regardless of age, race, education, income, or skill level.