Stephanie Sy: The Young AI Innovator Who Moved from the Bay Area to the PH

Stephanie Sy has transformed Thinking Machines into a dominant force in data science, and she has no intention of slowing down. She was chosen to join the 2019 class of the Asia 21 Young Leaders after being included on Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 list in 2018 and the Gen T 2019 list for technology innovation. She graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s in Management Science and Engineering.

“The push and pull were in my favor. The push was that I was feeling stagnated in the Bay area and the pull was obviously my home and family. It was a great life, but the desire to do something meaningful wasn’t getting fulfilled,” she shared with Harvard Business Review.

As a child, she has always enjoyed math. She shared that she has trouble memorizing things and has always found formulas to be really useful. Her passion for math has carried her far to where she is now in life and in her career.

Sy made the decision to start her own business in the Philippines because she was uninspired by her job in the Bay territory in the United States and desired to be closer to her family. By supporting them in comprehending vast amounts of data and knowledge, Thinking Machines assist associations and pioneers in making better-informed decisions. Her advice is to perfect the art of narrative if you want to start your own business or get a job in administration. She looks for candidates for her startup who have an inspiring viewpoint, the ability to grow, and the desire to learn.

At prestigious industry events like the International Conference on Machine Learning, her group has distributed original research on artificial reasoning. They play a crucial role in the UNICEF Innovation Fund’s efforts to address issues of poverty and advancement by developing open-source man-made brainpower models. Other works by Thinking Machines include a submission to the World Health Organization that examined 20,000 news articles on traffic incidents to identify trends in how road safety is covered in the Philippines and a paper that used information from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism to examine trends in voter registration in the country.

Being this far in her career and the steps that Thinking Machine is making and its impact, the one thing she’d give her younger self as advice (and probably something valuable for anyone that is starting their business or getting into the tech industry), Sy shared on Tatler Asia, “That passion isn’t found or immediately obvious; you have to go and cultivate it. I went to university in the US, and people there think if you’re not enjoying your first job, it’s a disaster, but passion comes from understanding a field and getting good at your job. Give it time.”