Dr. Suzanne Wertheim, Linguistic Anthropologist and CEO & Founder of Worthwhile Research & Consulting: on how to tackle bias in product development

Dr. Suzanne Wertheim is the CEO and Founder of Worthwhile Research & Consulting. Through the foundation of the research and consulting firm, she strives to address not only academic but also practical problems in business by actively being involved at the intersection of technology, computer science, and linguistic anthropology. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from UC Berkeley, and held faculty positions at Northwestern, University of Maryland, and UCLA. Furthermore, she has been invited to various talks in the United States and in Europe, to present her insights on the themes of cultural expressions of bias, language and gender, and anthropology and artificial intelligence. 

In today’s episode, Suzanne talks about her experience of transitioning from academia to the business space as a linguistic anthropologist. Along this journey, she shares how her expertise in linguistic anthropology contributed to tackling implicit and day-to-day exposure to bias, prevalent in product development and organizations as a whole. She warns that these built-in biases can normalize a certain type of bias to the wider public of products and services and suggests a structural approach to create a more inclusive and safer environment for the process of product and organizational development.