Why Collaborative AI Projects Beat Competitions and How it Helped me to Get a Job as a Data Analytics Consultant

Mulugheta T.SOLOMON from Eritrea, Africa, completed several Omdena challenges, upon which he became an Omdena Top Talent to work on paid gigs with companies. Through Omdena’s experience, he got a consulting job offered while working on an Omdena project as a technical mentor, a project manager, and finally as the Milan Omdena Chapter Lead.

Mulugheta, what is your background?

I did my Ph.D. in Management of Innovation of Agricultural and Food Systems (Postharvest Technology) at the University of Foggia, Italy. Before I became a Master of Science in Data Science at Rome Business School, Italy.  I also received MSc in Organic Agriculture from CIHEAM-Bari, Valenzano (BA) Italy,  and a BSc in Plant Sciences/Horticulture from the University of Asmara, Eritrea. I have worked for more than 15 years for public, private, and international civil societies. Currently, I work as a data analytics consultant for The Information Lab Italy.

How did you know about Omdena? When and why did you join?

I knew Omdena back in 2020 while attending an online webinar,  then I heard my mentor Rosana de Oliveira Gomes talking about Omdena; I decided to join, and I immediately started collaborating on core projects.

What job did you get? How did Omdena support you? 

I got a job as a data analytics consultant. Definitely, Omdena has been an excellent platform to improve my skills, especially soft skills. I became a product manager/lead and now I’m a Milan chapter lead. Some of my skills have been significantly improved such as management, leadership, communication, collaboration, flexibility, presentation, and reporting skills. Besides the knowledge gained in each project, and the data science project cycles (data collection – data cleaning – data analysis – data modeling – model deployment phases) are done every time with each Omdena AI Innovation Challenge. I have learned to work with several supportive tools such as GitHub and DAGsHub. This is the true power of Omdena´s collaborative projects. 

Some of the projects Mulugheta took part in:

• Facilitating Agricultural Sustainability and Financing Possibilities to Local Farmers in Nigeria With Credit Scoring 
• Optimizing Delivery Routes in LATAM using AI Planning 
• Using Computer Vision to Detect Ethnicity in Videos and Improve Ethnicity Awareness 

Moreover, I had a great chance to collaborate and give to the community as an instructor at Omdena School for the course “Data Science for Sustainable Agricultural and Food Systems”.

How did the Omdena experience change your worldview? 

It’s changed my view of the world from focusing on competition to concentrating on collaborating. Omdena also has given me the possibility of networking with several professionals and global talents which weren’t possible without Omdena.

Would you like to add something more?

I recommend joining Omdena and growing your career. It doesn’t matter what your geographical locality, country of origin, or your level of experience in AI or data science is (they have projects for different skill levels). Also, your English accent, and gender—anything you might think could be a barrier— doesn’t matter. At Omdena, there are no barriers, and diversity is truly advantageous.