Springboard Rise, our first data and design summit, brought together more than 250 students, alumni, and mentors for a full day of learning, networking, and fun at LinkedIn’s stunning San Francisco headquarters.
The day began with a celebration of the Springboard community by co-founders Parul Gupta and Gautam Tambay, who shared the company’s story and reiterated our mission to bridge the world’s skills gap by helping as many people as possible access high-quality, affordable education that they can translate into new-economy roles.
Kicking Springboard Rise off at LinkedIn HQ with a heart-warming story about changing lives! Honoured to be a part of this community! #SpringboardRise pic.twitter.com/wG6SArP4KP
— Ali R. Tariq ⚡️ (@alirtariq) September 8, 2018
Brian Xu, a data scientist at LinkedIn, followed up with an appropriately data-backed reminder of the increasing demand for talented data scientists and UX designers.
"It's a good time to be in data science and design," says #SpringboardRise speaker and @LinkedIn data scientist Brian Xu. In July 2015, there was a #datascience skills surplus of 35K in the 100 largest U.S. cities. This July, there was a shortage of 141K.
— Springboard (@Springboard) September 8, 2018
The attendees then moved on to different sessions and lightning talks led by 24 speakers from companies like Google, Dropbox, Uber, Quora, Pandora, and Facebook.
Communicating With Stakeholders: Influencing Business Decisions Based on Data featured Albert Chen, a data scientist at LinkedIn; Drishan Arora, a senior data scientist at Google; and Vineet Goel, a data infrastructure engineer at Robinhood.
Very interesting panel on communicating with stakeholders in #DataScience #SpringboardRise @RaviSRam pic.twitter.com/wyjeuMD3YH
— Sudha Ram (@sudharam) September 8, 2018
Diego Mendes, senior product designer at Facebook; Henry Modisett, design lead at Quora; and Joann Wu, senior director of consumer design at LinkedIn, shared their experiences helping to build massive online communities.
Great insight from @diegomendes during a #SpringboardRise UX design session: "Designers spend a lot of time thinking about what we can build and not enough about what we should and shouldn't build." (With a shout-out to this piece by @mags: https://t.co/0wWuX9J8hf) pic.twitter.com/TH3Jxf5cTy
— Springboard (@Springboard) September 8, 2018
Five Springboard alumni came together to talk about their experiences completing the data science and UX design courses, in addition to their career transitions. Legion product designer Tommy Koo explained how important mentorship was to his success.
Some of our incredible alumni are sharing their stories at #SpringboardRise. For @kootommy, one-on-one mentorship was "a big deal." He added, "I'm still friends with my mentor today. We really bonded through the program." pic.twitter.com/vStYiaaQEe
— Springboard (@Springboard) September 8, 2018
Amanda Coopersmith, program manager at Parity Partners, moderated the entertaining, moving, and informative Women in Tech panel. It featured Bekah Thayer, the Lean In programs manager at the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation; Sameera Poduri, a data science manager at Uber; Megan Witmer, a UX researcher at the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative; and Mansha Mahtani, a data scientist at Instagram.
The women discussed career transitions, how to judge a company’s culture during the interview process, and the importance of mentorship.
Mansha Mahtani delivered one of the quotes of the day during a conversation about mistakes and learning from failures: “Sleep is so underrated. Please get enough sleep.”
Here’s the Facebook Live stream of the discussion:
We’ll be sharing more—including videos—from Springboard Rise in the coming weeks. In the meantime, check out more of the tweets and Instagram photos from summit attendees.
