This content is sponsored by Melwood.
It’s a scene you may have seen in movies – enlarged bird’s eye view of blurry images of the same location taken over a period of time. Many times the difference could be just the angles of shadows. But sometimes, there are miniscule changes that escape the eyes of a casual observer.
It’s those changes that a team of highly trained professionals at Enabled Intelligence are looking for. Based in Falls Church, Virginia, Enabled Intelligence provides highly accurate and secure AI solutions and data labeling with a major focus on the Defense Department and the intelligence community. Their goal is to help train AI tools to detect threats as a way to bolster national security and inform military operations.
Lauren Bacon Smith is the company’s chief people officer, and she said when the company first started, they knew they would need people who possessed major attention to detail.
“People who could look at these very, very large images with very small objects in them, and be able to analyze them and find the objects and use context clues and measurements,” Bacon Smith said.
Many of the types of data Enabled Intelligence deals with involve overhead satellite geospatial imagery, and its employees, which include members of the neurodivergent community, are trained at a very high and deep level.
“That super attention to detail, ability to hyperfocus, ability to be trained in a new skill, and to be able to work on repetitive and even sometimes mundane projects, but not lose focus or get burned out is a superpower that our team has,” Bacon Smith said.
Nathan Gumowskyj is interning at Enabled Intelligence, and in the time he’s been with the company, he said one of the biggest differences he has seen is how much the people at work care for the employees, not just in their work but also about their wellbeing.
“They really promote taking breaks whenever you need to. They offer a large variety of ways to help you focus,” Gumowskyj said. This includes having fidget spinners and standing desks. “But the biggest thing is just how friendly everyone is and how welcoming it is.”
Gumowskyj learned about the company through a boot camp offered by Melwood and Enabled Intelligence. Melwood, a leading national employer and advocate for people with disabilities and injured veterans, has been active in the D.C. area and beyond for more than 60 years.
Before joining Enabled Intelligence, Gumowskyj had gone through Melwood’s abilIT program — a 14-week program that pairs innovative, highly technical training with personalized soft skills instruction. The program helps participants with the skills they need to build lifelong careers as competitive technology professionals through job search assistance, placement and on-the-job coaching.
Bacon Smith said the partnership with Melwood has created a workforce equipped with geospatial data labeling skills who are ready to hit the ground running.
Boot camp participants learn everything from how data labeling is used within artificial intelligence to the fundamentals of imagery analysis, and the higher level skill of geospatial data labeling.
What is data labeling?
Data labeling, also called data annotation, is the process of identifying data — including images, text files or videos — so that a machine learning model, or a computer program that uses an algorithm, can learn patterns and make predictions or decisions.
A common example of data labeling in action is the CAPTCHA tool that comes up when you log on to something.
“It asks you to prove that you’re not a robot, and to pick every picture of a crosswalk or pick every picture of a stop sign. That is an AI model that has been trained to know how to identify those objects,” Bacon Smith said.
“The more accurate the training data is, the more accurate and effective that AI model is going to be. Something that really sets Enabled Intelligence apart from our competitors is that we guarantee a 95% or higher accuracy rate.”
Tapping the talent of the disability community
The Geospatial Data Labeling Bootcamp has been a major success so far. Melwood and Enabled Intelligence are hosting two upcoming Geospatial Data Labeling boot camps on Oct. 7-11 and Nov. 2-8, with another session in the works for December to hire up to 100 data labelers.
“We really plan to use this boot camp as our main pipeline of hiring from the disability community,” Bacon Smith said.
Gumowskyj said he appreciated that before the boot camp started, he was sent a test run to learn how to use the software. He and his cohorts started with simple projects before graduating to more complicated tasks.
During the class, he also learned other skills that would be valuable in helping him thrive in a work environment.
“They started off with more of a classroom setup, basically giving a presentation on working in an office environment, working with others, and knowing how to take notes,” Gumowskyj said.
The upcoming boot camps are a perfect complement to Melwood’s abilIT program, which aims to ensure that participants leave equipped with both the know-how and soft skills necessary to join and succeed in the information technology or cybersecurity fields.
“These soft skills include how to dress for an interview, how to communicate in a professional manner, how to raise concerns with a supervisor and what to expect in a professional environment — all skills that will set them up for success,” said Joe Diaz, Melwood’s chief growth officer.
Gumowskyj said he enjoys being able to make a big difference in protecting national security.
“Having a computer be able to tell us that something is happening that we otherwise couldn’t have known of, could really change some things in the course of national security,” Gumowskyj said.
‘People with disabilities have many abilities’
The unemployment rate for people with a disability in 2023 is about twice that of those without a disability, 7.2% to 3.5%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Enabled Intelligence’s Bacon Smith said that specifically within the neurodivergent community, there are a lot of misconceptions, and moreover, an “untapped pool of talent” from which employers can find qualified employees.
But too often, “employers often hear disability and think liability,” Melwood’s Diaz said. “They worry about the cost of accommodations. In the majority of cases, accommodations cost $500 or less, and often, no money at all.”
Diaz encourages employers to partner with organizations, such as Melwood, to create a more inclusive, accessible workplace or to help find and recruit a more diverse workforce.
“Too often we think of people with disabilities as having a deficiency, when, in reality, the opposite is true. People with disabilities have many abilities – they are extremely innovative and bring unique ways of thinking, excellent problem-solving skills, and strong work ethic to organizations they’re part of,” Diaz said, adding that research shows that employers who hire and retain people with disabilities report lower turnover, higher employee morale and safer working conditions.
Before Gumowskyj took part in Melwood’s abilIT program and the boot camp with Enabled Intelligence, he had mastered the skills needed in his previous job and was no longer challenged because “it was always the same.”
With his current work at Enabled Intelligence, Gumowskyj said “different projects pop up and change how you’re thinking and how you’re looking at things, and sometimes you can be proud of the things you spotted, but you’re also given words of encouragement if you miss something, so you can make improvements. And a lot of jobs don’t offer it in a way that is really helpful to development.”
Gumowskyj said the different perspective of someone who is neurodivergent allows the person to spot things other people wouldn’t. “There’s just a different way of processing things, especially with different ways of pattern recognition that most people don’t have,” he said.
Candidates for the programs should have an interest in working in IT and AI. Participants do not need to have a college degree, IT certifications or previous working experience in the field.
“We need people who have strong computer skills and who really have that high attention to detail and ability to focus on something that needs problem-solving. Having a team with diverse ways of problem solving and different ways of thinking creates the most accurate and reliable AI solutions for our customers,” Bacon Smith said.
Those interested in applying to abilIT or the geospatial data labeling bootcamp are encouraged to visit melwood.org/abilit and fill out the application. A Melwood team member will reach out to begin the screening process.
