Marita Cheng AM

These are actual headlines from national Australian newspapers. Learn how Marita Cheng went from small town girl living in government housing to conquering the globe as one of Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech in the World, and the second youngest person to become a Member of the Order of Australia. Noticing the limited number of girls in her engineering class, at the age of 19, Marita founded Robogals to inspire girls into robotics, growing the organization into an international movement. She followed that up with artificial intelligence company Aipoly to help the blind identify objects in real time, which resonated with millions of people. And robotics company Aubot, making robots to help people in their everyday lives. Hold on tight as pocket rocket Marita shares how she changed the world.

Key Takeaways:

• The only failure is failure to try
• Do your best at what’s in front of you, and more opportunities will present themselves
• Choose yourself

As the founding CEO of Robogals, Marita led thousands of volunteers throughout the USA, Australia, UK, Japan and New Zealand, to teach 140,000 girls robotics globally. To achieve this huge feat, Marita needed to manage and inspire teams across the globe to take actions – all through her computer. How do you motivate people when they’re far away? How do you create community when your team is isolated from one another?

Key Takeaways:

• Creating community around a common vision
• Giving effective feedback and praise to optimise employee engagement
• Frontloading asynchronous communication to set your team up to win

What do you think of when you think of a robot? R2D2 or C3PO from Star Wars? Sonny from Isaac Asimov and Will Smith’s I, Robot? Or a robot in a factory stamping out panels for your Toyota? In the future, we were promised robots, so where are they all now? Join Forbes 30 Under 30 robotics founder Marita Cheng on a deep dive of robotics. From robots that coexist alongside us in our everyday environments, to the robots we don’t see behind the scenes, making it easier than ever for us to raise our standard of living, and the robots Aubot has made to help people in their daily lives. What’s happening now, where is it taking us going forward, and when will we finally get our own personal butlers, like Rosie from the Jetsons?

Key Takeaways:

• All the robots helping us today
• The big robotics projects: Where the investment and talent are heading
• Robot trends of the future

What’s actually happening in the world of artificial intelligence? What are people working on? What results are they seeing? Is it increasing productivity? Across the main industries, let’s look at a snapshot of artificial intelligence to see what’s happening. Marita Cheng, cofounder of artificial intelligence company Aipoly, which won Best of Innovation Awards at CES 2017 and 2018, will take you on this journey through the most exciting artificial intelligence companies and projects happening today.

Key Takeaways:

• Overview of what’s hot in artificial intelligence
• Ideas for artificial intelligence projects you could work on in your business
• Examples of companies using AI around the world to transform industries

When Marita first entered her engineering classes, she thought, “where are all the girls?” And so in her second year at university, she decided to do something about it. She founded Robogals to get girls interested in engineering and technology careers and tertiary studies by going to schools with robots and teaching girls how to build and program them. Now, the organization has taught over 100,000 girls in 11 countries. Awarded a prestigious Churchill Fellowship to study “strategies to get girls interested in engineering”, Marita shares insights from the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany, Jamaica, Japan and Australia on getting girls excited about engineering and giving them the tools to take on any challenge. For her work with Robogals, Marita received the Anita Borg Change Agent Award, Global Engineering Deans Council Diversity Award, and was named the Young Australian of the Year.

Key Takeaways:

• The exciting world of science, technology, engineering, mathematics
• From little things, big things grow
• Scale your impact with technology