Who she?

Becky Thorn Sietsma

What do I bring?

20+ years of experience working in and alongside teams building technology to tackle complex social challenges, including:

  • humanitarian emergencies

  • local government transformation

  • AI for health.

AI/ML

I have been working since 2018 with AI and data teams:

  • Coached AI for disasters team at the UN, 

  • Mentored AI health team in Gaza

  • Created the first Data & AI playbook and training for multidisciplinary AI teams training at ThoughtWorks — helping technical and non-technical folks move from principles to practice.

My broad background, spanning from mathematics to public sector tech to humanitarian innovation, means I can speak the language of data scientists, policy makers, and tech leaders alike. Bringing them together towards shared understanding — especially when the stakes are high — is a challenge I deeply value.


What do you need?

Facilitator

Purely holding space without intervention or involvement in steering the outcomes beyond steering the process to get there.

You might need this if you have enough opinions and experience in the team but you need someone independent to balance those voices - strong and quiet - and enable leaders to participate in content rather than facilitating people.

Example of past work:

Facilitated 2 week collaboration workshop across 6 depts of a local council to breakdown barriers and move their agendas - “we’ve come so far! that’s been a year of meetings in one week“, Head of Transformation, Families team

Mentor/Coach

Team or leadership mentoring / coaching - there’s a difference but I can flex to your needs and preferences. This may be just seeing you/your team through a difficult time.

Examples of recent work:

Team: Mentored an AI team leader from an inside look perspective of team challenges towards a broader perspective of achievement externally (even securing her a talking spot with international peers).

Leadership: Curated a personalised 3 week coaching and training course for a Head of Engineering towards a greater clarity of his role - and where it fitted within his career.

Consultant

As a consultant, I combine the roles of Facilitator, Coach and also give advice and steer - judging what is needed given where you need to get to - following your guidance but also my wisdom as an experienced consultant.

Examples of recent work:

AI: Delivery of Service assessment for AI health diagnostic tool - bringing together a team of Tech Lead, UX/Product and myself on team structure and ways of working to provide a structure evaluation of readiness to scale - suitable for team improvement and funder attraction.

Team Topologies: 6 week training programme for 30+ IT leadership at a financial services company - learning to identify team interaction patterns, ownership, building their own tech principles, working through real and near-real case studies (via Conflux)