Page 21 - Demo Faces

in our daily life, "we have to empower ourselves to own it, to solve our own very practical problems." Her message is a strong call for action to bring forward the innovator in each one of us.
Jo re considers ADB’s work in gender mainstreaming to be ahead of the curve, with one of the most sophisticated categorization approaches and corporate targets for mainstreaming gender in lending operations. She joined ADB 2 years ago and was surprised when she realized that the results of these e orts were being captured manually, using Excel les, disconnected from each other.
“This can’t capture the richness, the essence of what we are doing, how we are changing lives through lending. This is critical, as much of the progress toward gender equality in recent years has
been driven by data. We need to get the numbers, the evidence on what works, the progress so far, and what remains to be done,” Jo re says.
Jo re was delighted that management at the East Asia Department shared her sense of urgency to improve the process and supported her idea to develop an automated system to monitor gender mainstreaming e orts.
Jo re started the project in 2019. She tells us that despite not being a techie herself, she took up the challenge. To move ahead, "I hired terri c data scientists
who immediately started by discussing with the teams concerned, getting to know their speci c needs so that the system would be easy to use, applicable, implementable right from the start,” Jo re explains.
Five months later and now a system
is in place to capture and visualize gender results anywhere, anytime, and to tag project-level results to corporate results indicators. It enables the user to go deep into a project but can also zoom out to see the big picture in a department, a sector, or a country.
The system has an ask-me-anything function, with elements of arti cial intelligence that allow users to know, for example, how many jobs for women ADB projects have been created in a given year—and in a speci c sector—in Mongolia. The system can serve that right up.
“I’m very proud of it, but I’m also very proud that other departments are also adopting it and that this innovation has become a useful tool across
the organization. ADB is de nitely
a place where you can explore new ways of doing things,” says Jo re. She concludes with a powerful message: “Imagine working for a truly solutions- based organization, a place where each one of us is in charge for change.” And she concludes by teasing us with one more question: “What would you change?”
Watch Veronica Jo re’s talk at the 2020 ADB Innovation Fair
Trailer / Full talk
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