BROOKLYN – The inaugural Women in Sports Data Symposium is being held this Saturday, Aug. 20 at 9 a.m. at the Brooklyn Nets’ HSS Training Center in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. With support from the Nets and New York Liberty, the one-day networking and educational event will amplify women's voices in sports analytics across the technical spectrum and foster a community for women working in the sports industry.
Driven by a desire to increase awareness for women working in sports analytics and inspire the next generation, Tegan Bunsu Ashby, Senior Software Engineer for the Brooklyn Nets; Sarah Gelles, Director of Research and Development for the Houston Astros; Diana Ma, former Data Scientist for the Los Angeles Lakers; Casey Thayer, Machine Learning Engineer for Zelus Analytics; and Kristen Mori, Machine Learning Engineer for the Houston Astros, came together to launch this initiative. At the symposium, professionals and college students will hear from industry leaders through panel discussions and immersive experiences. Panelists include experts from ESPN Analytics, the NBA, the NFL, and various professional sports teams.
“Sports analytics is an important and growing industry, but women are still very underrepresented in the field. We created the Women in Sports Data Symposium as a way to bring our community together to network, share ideas and foster relationships with our peers across professional sports teams and media organizations,” said Bunsu Ashby. “Through projects like the hackathon, we are ensuring the next generation of women have access to sports analytics roles and are equipped with the resources to thrive in the industry.”
Additionally, the top three finalists from The Women in Sports Data hackathon will be invited to present during the symposium, with the winners earning cash prizes. The hackathon is a project-based data competition that the Symposium launched in May 2022 to provide women and non-binary amateur sports data enthusiasts the opportunity to tackle real-world problems with guidance from sports data professionals.
Tickets for the Women in Sports Data Symposium are on sale now.To purchase tickets or to find more information, visit womeninsportsdata.org. Event sponsors include Carnegie Mellon University, ESPN Analytics, Microsoft, NFL, Sportradar, Sports Reference, Stats Perform, and Zelus Analytics.