Computer Vision News - August 2017

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that person could overcome this, then
I can do it too. But what about positive
discrimination? Some women say they
don’t want to be positively
discriminated - “don’t give me special
treatment”. Others respond that in the
ideal world it would be like this, but
we don’t have an ideal world so we
need the positive discrimination. Who
is right?
Julie: I don’t want such a treatment as a
woman. I want to be valued as who I
am, and my ability to think through
problems, my ability to solve difficult
challenges. And I think any woman
really is the same. I can’t speak for
every person in the world, but I do
think that we love the fact that we can
be valued as equals as much as
possible. But we also have to
acknowledge that that’s not exactly the
world that we are living in. I don’t really
look to specifically hire any particular
woman, but I want to give the women
we are talking to the opportunity to
envision themselves here, at my
company. And so we will make sure to
add a woman to the interview panel,
for instance. So that they can see that
women can be successful here. So as
you said, that they see mentors, that
they see people similar to themselves
and there is a path for them. But again,
it’s a difficult problem.
Ralph: Let’s get back to the geographic
and ethnicity aspects. For example,
Africa is a huge continent - but how
many people from Africa are here?
How can we make sure that all the
talent which could be available in the
scattered areas in the world is included?
Julie: There a myriad of macro-
economic and political issues that play
into some of those regions that are
really hard to get a foothold in. And
those are things that are really difficult
to solve and will take a lot of time. But
as you mentioned earlier: we need
mentors. Having those mentors that are
able to mentor in specific regions,
wherever they are, I think that’s an area
where this would be very helpful.
Ralph: We agree that we have a huge
opportunity to reach more people in
areas which we don’t really consider
today. This panel is coming to an end,
and I would like to give you the
opportunity for a closing remark.
Tianli: I want to say that I want more
diversity in engineering because only
with diversity, you can design products
for everybody.
Terrence: There are two things I want to
mention. One is through the
preparation of this panel discussion I
realised that how Siemens is doing for
the workforce of STEM, and there is this
website you
really need to go there to take a look.
The other thing is in our company we
have a lot of open positions, so we are
looking for top talents, and you are
welcome to join us.
Julie: I’d say in the largest scheme of
things we really should think globally,
and act locally. So think of this as a
global problem that is larger than
anyone of us can individually solve. But
if we can make strides individually to
helping improve the STEM education
and helping improve the interest areas
in girls, for instance, or
underrepresented minorities.
Xin: Especially for this conference I
think that the relationship between
industry and universities are really
important for recruiting and for training
and to build our future talent. So I
would encourage companies to have
close relationships with professors to
do research collaborations or supervise
students. That will help a lot.
Expo Spotlight Panel 37
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