The Voice Tech Tsunami (feat. Joan Palmiter Bajorek)

Voice and the conversational AI field is flourishing. It is redefining how we interact with computers, i.e. NLP, Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Watch. Tech giants Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are investing heavily in voice technology in both hardware and software. Famed investor, Mark Cuban, recently stated, “There’s no future that doesn’t have ambient computing or voice activation. None.” However, voice tech still has significant race and gender biases (HBR, Bajorek, 2019), that have perilous implications for immigration, job hiring, transportation, surveillance, and more. One of the keys to fixing bias is the people in the room, the pipelines and retention of racial and gender diversity at companies.

Celebration of female talent and community are core goals of Women in Voice, the nonprofit with 20 chapters in 14 countries.

Women in Voice also champions female founders and VC investment in this space. Recently their partnership with the Amazon Alexa Startups team has showcased conversational AI and voice innovation from all around the world. All of this is on a mission to make society and voice technology better for everyone.