Didem Ün Ateş

Didem Un Ates is an AI/ Generative AI and Responsible AI executive with 25 years of background in management consulting (Capgemini, EY, and Accenture) and industry (Motorola, Microsoft, and Schneider Electric).
She recently served as the Vice President, AI Strategy & Innovation, for Schneider Electric. In addition to defining Schneider’s AI/ Generative AI Strategy and innovation roadmaps, her charter covered strategic partnerships, startups/VCs/PEs, academia, Data & AI upskilling, and Responsible & Sustainable AI.
Didem, a World Economic Forum AI Governance Alliance fellow, a Goldman Sachs Value Accelerator AI Council Advisor, and a Forbes Tech Council member, is a passionate AI practitioner with multiple awards such as Tech Women 100 Champion and Trailblazer 50. She directly supported the birth and incubation of Microsoft Business AI Solutions at Microsoft Research and led the Alice Envisions the Future/ Girls in AI Hackathons which has since been developed into several Diversity in AI programs across Microsoft and its Fortune500 customers and partners.
She has also lead operationalization of Responsible AI at Accenture, Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions, and Schneider Electric, putting her energy towards the future of AI and Generative AI, operationalizing responsible and sustainable AI practices. Prior to Schneider, she headed Applied Strategy, Data & AI, at the Chief Data Office of Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions, focusing on Microsoft’s largest Data, AI, and Metaverse engagements and partnerships including OpenAI.

Recent achievements include:
• Led Generative AI opportunity scan across a 130,000 Fortune 500 company with 200 VP & SVPs across 15 functions through 60 co-creation workshops in 6 weeks. Helped identify and prioritize 200 Generative AI use cases. Sized the 3-year GenAI opportunity and identified investment needs.
• Led the creation of GenAI / AI business cases for prioritized use cases, 15-month implementation plans, and annual budget allocations for 20 functions in four weeks.
• Spearheaded GenAI/ AI talent transformation and planning efforts with 50 HR & Training leaders across these functions.
• Built a high-performance team and brought on 1,500 partnerships in c. 60 subsidiaries over two years. Microsoft paid out $1B to these partners in the following five years.
• Spearheaded Accenture & Microsoft Humanitarian Program, rolling out a Power Virtual Agent for COVID-19 with flagship implementation in India where the solution was rolled out to 1.3 billion citizens.