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The Insular Foundation, in partnership with the For the Women Foundation, recently supported 18 scholars’ venture into data science. At the backdrop of InLife and For the Women Foundation’s shared advocacy to empower women through education, the training program presents career opportunities in data science and analytics which are considered as the careers of the future.

The 18 scholars, composed of 15 women and 3 men, completed 10 Saturdays of intensive data science online training from the comforts of their homes in various cities in Metro Manila, Cavite,  Nueva Ecija and Benguet.  The scholars whose average age was 24, came from diverse backgrounds -- new college graduates, employees of government agencies, teachers in public schools and InLife employees.  

With data science as an emerging field, the training focused on Analytics competencies such as Data Management, Data Visualization using Power BI, Statistical techniques, and methods in Python programming and Machine Learning. Scholars were grouped together and assigned with Data Science mentors who guided them with the planning, design and execution of their capstone projects. 

To apply their learnings on the use of large amounts of complex data or big data in decision-making, four teams of scholars presented their capstone projects to Insular Foundation’s Board of Trustees and project stakeholders from InLife and InLife Health Care (IHC) during their online graduation event last August 14. 

The capstone projects identified pain points in the core businesses of InLife and IHC, and proposed data-driven solutions. One of the capstone projects focused on finding ways to optimize InLife’s revenue streams from existing customers. A project looked at overseas Filipino workers as a market for health and life insurance, while another project zeroed in on the customers’ gender as a factor in purchasing insurance products. The fourth project aimed to detect probable cases of abuse in IHC claims.

As judges of the capstone projects, InLife President and CEO Raoul Littaua, InLife Chief Marketing Officer Gae Martinez, and IHC President and CEO Noemi Azura declared that all four capstone projects were winners.  

Noemi commended the scholars for their excellent project presentations. “It is so inspiring to see all of you having that knowledge and passion to deliver the capstone projects which not only deliver good business value, but most of all deliver positive social impact.”

Insular Foundation Executive Director Ana Soriano also congratulated the scholars for diving into data science and analytics which are far from their academic and work experience. 

“For The Women’s mission is to change women’s lives through intensive technical skills training to enable upward career mobility. Thank you for giving us a chance to sponsor the training of the interested few. Hopefully we can make a big difference in their lives as they begin their journey in data science,” she said. 

For The Women Executive Director and Co-Founder Cara Wilson reciprocated the appreciation to InLife and Insular Foundation for believing in their mission to bring data science to women. 

“We felt that data science is a skill that did not have to stay in an ivory tower, just with a particular analytics team of a company. You can teach this and make the whole enterprise more data-driven. Congratulations to all our scholars,” she said.  

One of the scholars, Shaira Acquiat, expressed gratitude to the Foundations for the learning opportunity in data science.   

“We learned how to code which most of us were doing for the first time… Our learnings are not just based on the hard skills, but also on the soft skills like how to be an effective communicator and a team player, and how to practice ethical ways of doing data science, and many more. We learned a lot in this program but still there are a lot to learn,” Shaira said. 

“We promise to continue learning, practicing and applying data science. We promise to pay it forward by applying data science to solve real-life problems, and by teaching it to others,” she added.