Who is building this Community and Why?

Hi There,

My name is Shilpi Agarwal. I’m a Social Intelligence Leader and Social Good Enabler.

Like many of you, I’ve had the privilege of playing a number of roles in my lifetime. No, didn’t mean it like that. My time hopefully isn’t up yet 🙂 but so far, I’ve been fortunate to be an Engineer, Designer, Strategist, Marketer, Instructor, Advisor, Mentor, Mentee, Student, Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother, and Friend.

As a long term Data Marketer of 18+ years, I never stopped to think about the kind of Marketer I was or am until recently. When I ran targeted Campaigns on Google or Facebook, I was happy for the amount of granular targeting they’d allow me as an Advertiser. When I received Data from third parties, I never questioned the ethics of their data collection methods.

But this changed after Cambridge Analytica. There was a lot of learning for everyone after that episode – For Consumers, Data Collectors, Brands, and Advertisers.

I had many discussions with my students at Stanford Continuing Studies, a Program designed for Professionals. We talked about the ethical vs unethical uses of Data. We came up with several ideas on tackling the newly found challenges in this Data Privacy and Ethics space.

This was the Foundation of a rich, engaged and conscious Ethical Data Marketers Community!

At that moment, I knew that this was not a one person’s job, neither was it fair to blame anyone – The Government, The Social Media Giants, The Data Aggregators, The Brands, The Advertisers or The Consumers but rather there was work carved out for all of us as a Community.