Thelma Cyril Nwokeke

The best career advice I've received came from a mentor who has been very helpful to me. He's a man who has daughters who are very intelligent, and he actually funds any woman who wants to scale. His advice to me is that I just need to keep my head up, and that whatever stereotype has been placed on me, we stand shoulder to shoulder with the men in this field. He always encourages me and sends me articles all the time to read. He highlights articles that are very specific to what I'm working on and connects me with people in the industry as well. His wife has also been morally encouraging to me. She helps me with how to speak well - I take speech classes to be able to improve my career. She has connected me to other resources to help build my company. Their family has been a helpful one for me.

I would say don't ever accept no. Don't ever accept the word that you can't do it, or don't ever let anyone make you feel like you don't belong. When I came to the United States, my essence was really strong, but when I tried to explain my ideas to professors or people in my field, it was hard. There was always that restraint of doubt, but I never stopped. I know exactly what my vision is. I know how it's going to benefit the younger girls who are coming after me, because there will always be one excuse. The excuse might be you're not intelligent enough, or you're a woman - it's always going to be one excuse or the other. So I would say do not ever accept no. Trust yourself and believe in what you believe in.

I would say my field is going to have very much opportunities opening up, because the world is really evolving and tilting towards artificial intelligence. It's embedded everywhere now, and that was initially the restraint - it was hard to get jobs in this field because they saw it as too futuristic, but it is no longer futuristic, it's now. So I would say the faster we get on board with this, the easier it's going to be for everyone else. I think the field is very much booming. There are AI labs looking for experts to help create models. Being the human in the loop is really important. You don't want to have a whole patriarchal response coming from LLM models. Having women in this field that are training the future is very much important, because we also want to train models that actually reflect our character as women, and not reflect the patriarchal character itself. Making those objective responses, not leaning towards 100% patriarchal responses, but more having to include our understanding as well is really important. So I would say yes, it's a field that I would encourage a lot of women to actually come into, because we are actually training the future. If we want the future to actually speak to us and align with our values and our core, this is where we need to be right now. It's no longer a question of can you work in this field - it's now a question of where do I apply, how do I get on board with this right now? This is a field that I think is really important for us to be in to be able to shape the future.

The values that are very important to me are honesty and transparency. I love when people are honest with me, even if it's not going to work - just tell me it's not going to work. It's easier that way than leading me on, and it's the same thing I bring to my work. My platform is 100% honest and transparent. If a tool is not going to work for a particular task, I'm going to tell you straight up it's not going to work. There's no reason to try to draw in students who I know are very vulnerable and try to fabricate, hallucinate, or lie in their work. No, I don't like that, because I know how hard it is to be a student and try to get resources that are not credible. In my personal life, I love honesty and transparency. I'm a very open person, and I just would appreciate it when someone is honest and transparent to me, too. So that is also what I bring to my company as well - honesty and transparency.