While the R community has made strides in increasing the representation and participation for women and users from underrepresented regions, there are still members of the R community that have expressed desires for a more inclusive space in addition to these strides. In addition, there are unique challenges that underrepresented R users experience in their respective workspaces or academic environments. In late February of 2020, Danielle Smalls-Perkins and Dorris Scott created Mi-R (Minorities in R) as a result of their various experiences both in and outside the R community. The purpose of this talk is to reflect on the challenges, highlights, and future directions of the first six months since the creation of Mi-R.
Danielle Smalls-Perkins co-founded MiR Community with the hope that the R community would continue to encourage the inclusion and recognition of contributions made from R users of diverse backgrounds. She loves to use R for understanding and storytelling. Danielle currently works as a Senior Strategist in Google's Trust and Safety Team. She advocates for model fairness, interpretability, and reducing harmful outcomes of algorithmic decision-making on vulnerable populations.
Dorris Scott is the GIS Librarian and Social Science Data Curator at Washington University – St. Louis, where she provides consultation on projects that use geospatial data along with providing training in various GIS software, programming applications of geospatial data, and data management. She also serves as a liaison between Washington University Libraries and social science departments assisting faculty with their data needs such as data management and data curation. Dorris received her PhD in Geography from the University of Georgia, with a specialization in GIS applications for public health.