10 change-makers who inspired me in 2018

[The AchieVer]

One of the great privileges of my job is meeting with people around the world who are pushing the bounds of technology to make a difference. These change-makers are solving some of our world’s most pressing challenges, often overcoming the odds to do so.

As I reflect on the year, I want to celebrate 10 people and teams who inspired me in 2018 with their ambition to think big and take action, and also with their commitment to never lose sight of those whose lives they are trying to better. From a Ghanaian teacher who taught his students Word on a chalkboard, to a young entrepreneur in Paris who is reimagining recycling, to a Microsoft team in the United States working to improve outcomes in the foster-care system, these change-makers’ stories made me pause and reflect on the incredible opportunity each of us has to impact and spark change in our organizations, our local communities and the world.

I hope their stories inspire you as much as they inspired me.

The students, teachers and volunteers defining the future of computer science education

In the U.S., there will be 1.4 million computer science-related jobs by 2020, but only 400,000 graduates with the skills to apply for those jobs.

Our TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) program aims to close this gap by bringing computer science education to high schools across the United States. Volunteers from Microsoft and other organizations partner with teachers to team-teach computer science to students who otherwise would not have the opportunity to learn to code.

Earlier this month, I met with students and teachers from Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science (AMS) in the Bronx and Williamsburg Preparatory High School in Brooklyn who are participating in the program. The group from AMS — students Braylin and Danasha, along with teacher Tyree Alexander and volunteer Ray Contreras (a senior at Hunter College who is pursuing a BA in computer science) — and Williamsburg Prep — students Khendra and Patrick, and their teacher Wayne Tobias — shared the impact TEALS has had on their lives and how it is preparing them for the future.

I was so impressed by the commitment of teachers like Wayne, who told me how he had worked in finance and then started his own graphic design company, prior to changing careers to teach math more than a decade ago, and of Tyree, who sought out TEALS because computer science education had been unavailable to Ray when he attended the school. Ray now returns each week to his alma mater to help Tyree teach computer science.  

The results speak for themselves: TEALS students score above the national average on computer science exams and, within two years of working with a TEALS volunteer, the majority of classroom teachers are able to teach computer science on their own, building the foundation for sustainable computer science education in U.S. high schools.

Heathrow Airport’s Samit Saini and Komal Tekchandani

 

For 13 years, Samit Saini worked as a security officer at Heathrow Airport in London, checking bags and reading X-ray machines. Heathrow is Europe’s busiest airport — 80 million passengers passed through last year alone — and Samit noticed how challenging it was to communicate with international travelers because of language barriers.

Samit asked his IT department whether there was an automated solution to replace the sheets of paper listing common phrases and their meanings in different languages, which security officers relied on, but he was told it was too expensive and there wasn’t enough funding.

That didn’t stop Samit, though. With the aid of online tutorials, he learned PowerApps and built a simple translation app on his own.

It was such a success that Samit now works as a full-time IT user-adoption specialist at the airport, training others how to use PowerApps. The Heathrow team has built more than a dozen apps to date, improving the efficiency of processes that were previously done with paper and pencil.

I was struck by the impact Samit and his manager Komal Tekchandani were able to have as individuals on the airport’s digital transformation journey.

By democratizing access to technology, today it’s possible for anyone with a big idea and the passion to see it through to change entire institutions for the better and, in the process, advance their career trajectory.

Ghanaian teacher Richard Appiah Akoto

When Richard Appiah Akoto was preparing his students in rural Ghana for a national IT exam earlier this year, he refused to let a lack of working computers get in the way.

In remarkably accurate detail, Richard drew the Word user interface on his classroom chalkboard so his students could learn how to use it.

“I wanted to teach them how to launch Microsoft Word, but I had no computer to show them. I had to do my best,” Richard said. “I drew the features and labeled them correctly so that they would know what was what. Then I drew what you would see on your computer screen after launching Word.”

His illustrations went viral, and our teams rallied to support him, providing the school with a computer lab.

John Steinbeck wrote: “I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist … it might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”

To me, Richard exemplifies the dedication and creativity of so many great teachers who go above and beyond each day for their students.

John Cronin of John’s Crazy Socks

 

Having a diverse workforce that includes people with disabilities is essential for any company that wants to maximize its impact. A small company that's demonstrating this is John’s Crazy Socks in Melville, New York.

Twenty-two-year-old John Cronin, along with his father Mark, started the company two years ago. The online store sells thousands of socks that are about as unique as you can imagine — from socks with donuts to socks with dad jokes to socks with emoticons.

But what truly makes John’s Crazy Socks unique is that John has Down syndrome and has made inclusion the cornerstone of the business. More than half of the full-time 35-person staff is made up of employees with a disability, and John has even testified before a congressional committee on the power of small businesses to empower people with disabilities.

The company, which operates on our cloud, recently gave employees Office 365 accounts, and for many of them it was the first time they ever had an email account of their own.

I find John’s energy and his love for the business to be contagious. His dad reflects with pride: “When John was born, there were so many people telling us all the things he wouldn’t be able to do. We just let John define that.”

High school students Mikayla Sharrieff, Bria Snell and India Skinner

After water fountains at their high school in Washington D.C. were taken out of commission because of potential lead contamination, Mikayla Sharrieff, Bria Snell and India Skinner developed their own method to purify lead-contaminated water.

They entered it into a prestigious NASA-sponsored science competition and were the only all-black, all-female team to make it to the finals. Disturbingly, that made them the target of hackers spewing racism who tried to manipulate the voting system and ruin their chance to win.

What grabbed my attention when I read about them in the news was their ingenuity and determination to be role models for their peers. “In the STEM field, we are underrepresented,” Mikayla told The Washington Post. “It’s important to be role models for a younger generation who want to be in the STEM field but don’t think they can.”

I invited Mikayla, Bria and India to our annual hackathon at Microsoft, where they collaborated on a project to inspire more girls to learn to code, developing a curriculum that other students will be able to use to form coding clubs. 

I also had the opportunity to spend some time chatting with them, along with their mentor Marissa Jennings, founder and CEO of SOCIALgrlz, and they shared with me their aspirations for using technology to empower women and girls in local communities.

I’d love to have them at Microsoft one day, but, wherever they land, I’m convinced they are well on their way to changing the world, and I’m confident they’ll inspire countless others to do the same.

Yanbing Bai of Tohoku University

In March 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded shook the northeastern coast of Japan, causing a tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people and prompted the world to re-examine how it responds to disasters.

One of the people leading this new thinking is researcher Yanbing Bai and the team at Tohoku University’s International Research Institute of Disaster Science, located in a region that was hit especially hard by the earthquake.

I met Yanbing during a recent visit to Tokyo, and he shared the work he is doing to help relief workers stand a better chance of saving more lives when the next disaster strikes.

Historically, it has been very challenging and time-consuming for local authorities to review satellite imagery of areas impacted by a disaster to coordinate their emergency response. Yanbing is applying our latest computer vision technology to address this, building a system to automatically create an informational footprint of the disaster area.

We awarded Yanbing a grant as part of our AI for Earth initiative, which is focused on applying AI to solve global environmental challenges and is part of our broader AI for Good work. His pioneering research is one example of why we launched an initiative focused specifically on AI for Humanitarian Action this fall.

 

Having a diverse workforce that includes people with disabilities is essential for any company that wants to maximize its impact. A small company that's demonstrating this is John’s Crazy Socks in Melville, New York.

Twenty-two-year-old John Cronin, along with his father Mark, started the company two years ago. The online store sells thousands of socks that are about as unique as you can imagine — from socks with donuts to socks with dad jokes to socks with emoticons.

But what truly makes John’s Crazy Socks unique is that John has Down syndrome and has made inclusion the cornerstone of the business. More than half of the full-time 35-person staff is made up of employees with a disability, and John has even testified before a congressional committee on the power of small businesses to empower people with disabilities.

The company, which operates on our cloud, recently gave employees Office 365 accounts, and for many of them it was the first time they ever had an email account of their own.

I find John’s energy and his love for the business to be contagious. His dad reflects with pride: “When John was born, there were so many people telling us all the things he wouldn’t be able to do. We just let John define that.”

High school students Mikayla Sharrieff, Bria Snell and India Skinner

After water fountains at their high school in Washington D.C. were taken out of commission because of potential lead contamination, Mikayla Sharrieff, Bria Snell and India Skinner developed their own method to purify lead-contaminated water.

They entered it into a prestigious NASA-sponsored science competition and were the only all-black, all-female team to make it to the finals. Disturbingly, that made them the target of hackers spewing racism who tried to manipulate the voting system and ruin their chance to win.

What grabbed my attention when I read about them in the news was their ingenuity and determination to be role models for their peers. “In the STEM field, we are underrepresented,” Mikayla told The Washington Post. “It’s important to be role models for a younger generation who want to be in the STEM field but don’t think they can.”

I invited Mikayla, Bria and India to our annual hackathon at Microsoft, where they collaborated on a project to inspire more girls to learn to code, developing a curriculum that other students will be able to use to form coding clubs. 

I also had the opportunity to spend some time chatting with them, along with their mentor Marissa Jennings, founder and CEO of SOCIALgrlz, and they shared with me their aspirations for using technology to empower women and girls in local communities.

I’d love to have them at Microsoft one day, but, wherever they land, I’m convinced they are well on their way to changing the world, and I’m confident they’ll inspire countless others to do the same.

Yanbing Bai of Tohoku University

In March 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded shook the northeastern coast of Japan, causing a tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people and prompted the world to re-examine how it responds to disasters.

One of the people leading this new thinking is researcher Yanbing Bai and the team at Tohoku University’s International Research Institute of Disaster Science, located in a region that was hit especially hard by the earthquake.

I met Yanbing during a recent visit to Tokyo, and he shared the work he is doing to help relief workers stand a better chance of saving more lives when the next disaster strikes.

Historically, it has been very challenging and time-consuming for local authorities to review satellite imagery of areas impacted by a disaster to coordinate their emergency response. Yanbing is applying our latest computer vision technology to address this, building a system to automatically create an informational footprint of the disaster area.

We awarded Yanbing a grant as part of our AI for Earth initiative, which is focused on applying AI to solve global environmental challenges and is part of our broader AI for Good work. His pioneering research is one example of why we launched an initiative focused specifically on AI for Humanitarian Action this fall.

 

Entrepreneur Cassandra Delage of Plast’if

We know that the jobs of today will not be the jobs of tomorrow, which is why it’s so important that we invest in programs that equip today’s workforce and youth with the skills they will need in the future.

I saw this firsthand at our AI School in Paris, which we designed to provide immersive training in both the hard and soft skills that will increasingly be required in every industry.

It was inspiring to meet with students from different backgrounds and with limited technical experience — former teaching assistants, lawyers, business people, even those who did not have the opportunity to graduate from high school — who within seven months of intensive training, followed by 12 months of apprenticeship, will now be ready for new careers in AI and data science. All of them disprove the illusion that a university computer science degree is required to pursue a career in technology.

While there, I met Cassandra Delage, a young entrepreneur with an ambitious dream of reimagining recycling. Her company, Plast’If, has created what might be best described as a “recycling vending machine.” You take plastic, put it in the machine and it’s converted into a useful object you can take with you. Notably, she improved it with students at the AI School, creating an ML model that recognizes the plastic, deploying it on an inexpensive computer and then integrating it with a 3D printer — turning her novel idea into reality.

Cassandra’s startup is the perfect encapsulation of how advances in technology can create new opportunity, helping to address enormous societal issues — like sustainability — while preparing people with critical new skills.

Foster parent and Microsoft colleague Ruthie Seale

We start our leadership team meetings each week highlighting a team or individual at Microsoft or outside the company that is passionate about how technology can make a difference in the world.

One example that moved me this year was the work of one of our teams to apply Dynamics 365 and other Microsoft technologies to improve outcomes among Arizona’s most vulnerable populations — the more than 15,000 children in foster care.

Their aim is to create a unified solution that will support more than 1,400 child welfare workers in the state. Child welfare workers will have a better understanding of the population they are serving to deliver more personalized support and, whenever possible, offer preventative services that keep children at home instead of placing them in foster care.

It’s an initiative spearheaded by Ruthie Seale, in our services business, who understands the stakes firsthand, knowing all too well what happens when children fall through the cracks of the foster care system.

Ruthie shared how she and her family united with her son, Jon, when he was a 14-year-old struggling foster child. He’s now 26, has found a job he enjoys and is on a good path.

In part because of her own family’s experience, Ruthie is so personally and deeply connected to the mission of her customer. It exemplifies what I encourage each employee at Microsoft to do: Connect their own purpose and passion with their work and use Microsoft as a platform to pursue it.

Dr. Johnetta MacCalla and Dr. Ayanna Howard of Zyrobotics

I am incredibly optimistic about the opportunity we have to apply advances in technology to empower the more than 1 billion people around the world with disabilities.

That’s one reason why we started our AI for Accessibility initiative earlier this year, which provides grants and support to research organizations and NGOs, as well as entrepreneurs, who are bringing their passion and enthusiasm to help people with disabilities fully participate in our society and economy.

Our first AI for Accessibly grantee, Zyrobotics, has built a reading-fluency program for students with diverse learning needs, providing support to students from low-income homes who may not otherwise have access to speech-language or occupational therapists. We’ve subsequently provided grants to 8 other innovators.

By creating custom speech models with Azure AI, Zyrobotics can identify when a student using its programs might need interactive feedback, much like a therapist would recognize and provide.

I visited CEO Dr. Johnetta MacCalla and CTO Dr. Ayanna Howard in Atlanta this fall, and they shared with me how they are able to offer personalized help for each child. That’s something they would not have been able to do without AI — and it demonstrates the potential we have to apply advances in technology to amplify human capability, and, in the process, change lives.

The “heritage activists” at Iconem

I’m always excited to learn about new and unexpected ways that people are experiencing the benefits of AI. Around the world, ancient sites are being destroyed by both natural and man-made disasters — but with the help of digital technology, French startup Iconem is bringing them back to life.

The team of "heritage activists" is using Azure AI to stitch together hundreds of thousands of photos from historical sites into high-resolution 3D models that help experts assess damage and people experience parts of their cultural heritage that otherwise would be lost forever. To date, Iconem has documented landmarks like Angkor Wat in Cambodia, as well as sites in war-torn parts of Iraq and Syria.

My colleague Leine Toukatli, a Microsoft attorney who fled Damascus in 2015, was deeply moved by their recreation of the famous Umayyad Mosque. “I felt like I [was] in a dream, like I’m really in Syria,” she said. “I felt the sun inside the mosque.”

Iconem founder Yves Ubelmann sums it up best: “It’s a way to keep history alive. … If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you go.”

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Each of these change-makers show us how one individual or team, driven by passion and ingenuity, can empower others and have meaningful impact in the world. And it’s one reason I am so optimistic as I look ahead at how each of us can shape what comes next in 2019 and beyond.

 

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