Meet the Speaker — Swagata Ashwani
3 min readSep 7, 2022
Swagata Ashwani is a Senior Data Scientist at Boomi. She is leading a hands-on workshop at the WITS Fall 2022 Virtual Summit on deploying custom Machine Learning Models in AWS Sagemaker.
- Why is speaking at WITS important to you? — Technology has always fascinated me from a very young age. At that time, when it was uncommon for women to drive technical roles, my mother being a technology leader for a global company set an example for me on how important it is to become an independent woman. Growing up and becoming a woman in tech today, I want to do the same thing my mother did for me- inspire, motivate and encourage women to take charge, and build an awesome, independent and driven career in tech.
- What or who inspires you? — Inspiration comes from multiple things for me. First and foremost, is the people around me, be it at home, work, friends, I am blessed to have positive people around me who inspire me to be the best version of myself. Secondly, a drive/passion to make an impact as a woman in tech/women of color and change the way the world perceives minority/underrepresented/women . And third, Leaders, thinkers around the world who made an impact to the world we live in- one of most inspiring people for me is Indira Nooyi
- Most useful article you’ve read in the last month — There is a saying — You can’t get much done in life if you only work when you feel good. This always reminds me during my off days, that how important it is to push yourself even when you are not feeling the most excited at work, outside. I regularly read about productivity hacks and this one that I read from an Indian Celebrity resonated so well with me — https://www.businesstoday.in/lifestyle/story/as-i-grow-older-im-getting-greedier-actor-suniel-shetty-on-hacks-for-a-productive-day-346066-2022-08-31 ,it talks about how one gets greedy with age and is able to get more done. Must read!
- When you were a kid what was your dream job? — For the longest time I had a dream of becoming an Astronaut since I was curious to explore the world outside our planet.
- Tell us something about your session — In my session “Deploying custom machine learning models in AWS Sagemaker”, I will demonstrate how we can use AWS Sagemaker to create a custom machine learning model and do a hands-on exercise to learn each step of the process. These days, a lot of models are custom and the way to get these custom models out deployed for consumption is not as straightforward as one might assume!
- What other sessions or speakers are you most excited to see? — I am really intrigued and excited to hear from two speakers at this summit — Sreeja Nair’s — Crossing the career chasm, managing your career as a product and Ameeta Soni’s — Hot technologies for 2023 and Beyond.
