About the Authors

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WW Support Leader, Modern Work, Microsoft 

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts UK 

Co-founder, Future World Alliance 

Co-founder, Seattle Women in Tech Consortium 

Sequoyah Fellow, American Indian Science and Engineering Society

Ross is an author of The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention and holds seven patents. He is a PhD scholar at University College Dublin, focused on AI, automation, worker displacement, and the future of work. To further this effort, he is a co-founder of the Future World Alliance, a nonprofit committed to responsible AI for the next generation.  

Director, Modern Work, Microsoft 

European Disability Champion 2016 

Mayte Cubino Gonzalez is the EMEA Director for MS Office and Project/Planner Technical Engineering Support at Microsoft, and the Site Lead and board member of Microsoft Portugal. She was recognized in 2016 with the European Disability Champion award for her work in raising awareness about hidden disabilities and workplace adjustments. 

Communication Director, Microsoft Modern Work

Emily McKeon is currently a Communication Director at Microsoft focused on global strategic business and executive communications designed to strengthen employee engagement and drive value for the Customer Service and Support business. Simplifying the complex is her superpower, developed over 25 years at Microsoft through a variety of roles across communications and HR disciplines. She has vast communication experience and a strong depth of knowledge in customer support, global diversity & inclusion, and employee engagement.

Dr. Xin Deng is currently a Machine Learning Scientist at Microsoft. She is currently actively contributing her expertise in M365 Outlook Copilot utilizing GPT models. Her work has been involved in processing various data warehouse sources, building models in customer behavior, user targeting, personalized user recommendation and feedback topics, and shipping intelligent product features through data mining, machine learning and NLP techniques. Before joining Microsoft, she had been a research scientist with LexisNexis Healthcare for over one year. 

Dr. Deng published over twenty papers and book chapters in premium journals and conferences, and she also gave invited talks and presentations at many conferences and universities. She was the Co-Chair of IEEE BigData/KDD Workshop: Big Data Analytic Technology For Bioinformatics and Health Informatics (KDDBHI) from 2014 to 2021, and also Co-Chair of IEEE BigData Workshop: Big Data Technology and Ethics Considerations in Customer Behavior and Customer Feedback Mining (BEBF) from 2016 to 2018. She was also the chair of Young Professional Group of IEEE Orlando Section.

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KuxtBPUAAAAJ&hl=en (Over 600 citations)

 A fellow with the London-based Royal Society of Arts, Boinodiris has focused on inclusion in technology since 1999. She currently leads IBM Consulting’s Trustworthy AI Practice, she is the AI ethics board focal for all of consulting, serves on the leadership team of IBM’s Academy of Technology and leads IBM’s Trustworthy AI Center of Excellence. 

She is the co-author of the book ‘AI for the Rest of Us’. Boinodiris is a co-founder of the Future World Alliance, a 501c3 dedicated to curating K-12 education in AI ethics. She is pursuing her Ph.D. in AI and Ethics at University College Dublin’s Smart Lab. In 2019, she won the United Nations Woman of Influence in STEM and Inclusivity Award and was recognized by Women in Games International as one of the Top 100 Women in the Games Industry as she began one of the first scholarship programs in the United States for women to pursue degrees in game design and development.

Mostaq Shakil serves as the Global General Manager of Modern Work Support Engineering at Microsoft. Leading a vast global team spread across 48 countries.

Shakil oversees the deployment and support and support of all Microsoft 365 products and Copilot for Microsoft 365, for all commercial customers. His career encompasses roles in product development and sustained engineering for several major products. Shakil has authored a number of papers on software globalization and has also contributed as a part-time lecturer on the same subject at the University of Washington. Additionally, he is a recognized speaker at TSIA and the APAC Future of Work Summit.

Senior Finance Manager, Microsoft

Michael is a finance manager at Microsoft focused on customer support.  He holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.  He lives in Seattle with his wife, Sallie.

Director, Microsoft Modern Work, Supportability

Jason Weum is a seasoned veteran within Microsoft, boasting an impressive 18-year journey characterized by remarkable versatility. His significant influence has been felt in pivotal roles such as Director of Supportability for Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Viva, and Office, Principal Program Manager in Engineering, and Senior Program Manager Lead in IT. Jason's commitment to innovation and user-centric solutions garnered him the prestigious Microsoft Platinum Award in 2022.