Gina Romero, co-founder of social-impact tech start-up Connected Women, has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Women in AI Leadership Awards by VentureBeat in the AI Rising Star category.

Since 2019, VentureBeat has been honoring women leaders, mentors, researchers, and entrepreneurs transforming the AI industry and making it significantly more equitable, ethical, and groundbreaking for the broader population. In particular, it created the VentureBeat Women in AI Awards to emphasize how impactful the contributions of these women are to the field while giving them some much-deserved recognition for their hard work.

Romero founded Connected Women in 2013, launching it first in Singapore and then in the Philippines. The vision was to improve the lives of women through meaningful online work. The platform initially linked Filipina virtual assistants with entrepreneurs. However, it has long embraced training disadvantaged Filipino women for the digital economy, thus helping them not only upskill but to future-proof their repertoire.

“Connected Women’s transition into AI started with the idea of solving a problem: How do you create tech-powered jobs for people with the most basic skills, connectivity, and devices?” Romero muses. “How do we bring jobs to the masses and make sure they aren’t left behind in the future of work?”

Realizing the manual labor that goes on behind the scenes of AI launched the framework for her business model. “Although a lot of the work in AI and machine learning is highly technical, a huge amount of manual labor is needed behind the scenes,” she continues.

“This work is often carried out by invisible humans (humans in the loop) that handle large volumes of data that require tagging, categorizing, and cleaning,” Romero says. She marries this need with the needs of numerous Filipino women for a stable income stream that keeps them free to still manage affairs at home or other commitments.

“The women in CW are steady, stable, and dedicated workers who need to earn to support their families. This is more than just a job for them. It’s a chance – or sometimes a second chance – that they never thought they would have.” she adds.

CW launched Elevate AIDA (artificial intelligence data annotation), its flagship training program, in 2020. Together with UN Women, it teaches low-income and displaced women for AI work through modules. Currently, it has trained 567 women and a total of 111 graduates were hired into jobs.

The program has been awarded by UN Women’s WEPS (Women Empowerment Principles) Awards and the ITU Digital World in Geneva. Romero herself was also a finalist for InLife’s Shero of The Year (2020). VentureBeat is only the most recent of a string of accolades. Former winners of the Rising Star category include Kate Kallot (director of AI ecosystem Arm) and Arezou Soltani Panah (Deakin University research fellow).

The Women in AI Leadership Awards is hosted by VentureBeat and presented at the Transform 2022 Executive Summit. The awards ceremony is taking place at the Transform event on July 19 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.