Gabriela de Queiroz founded f02 labs, a developer-relations consultancy for AI companies, and R-Ladies, the international organization advancing gender diversity in statistical computing. Previously a chief data scientist at IBM and director of AI at Microsoft for Startups, she specializes in helping developers and founders gain the technical resources, practical guidance, and professional networks needed to build useful products.
Building communities, then AI programs
Raised in Brazil, de Queiroz studied statistics and epidemiology before continuing her statistics education in California. In 2012, she founded the first R-Ladies chapter in San Francisco. Four years later, she helped establish R-Ladies Global with support from the R Consortium, expanding a local meetup into an international network organized around technical education, mentorship, and professional opportunity.
She subsequently founded AI Inclusive, which supports gender minorities in artificial intelligence through workshops, educational programs, and scholarship partnerships. These organizations reflect her conviction that inclusive technical communities influence who acquires technical skills, builds professional confidence, and helps shape emerging technologies.
At IBM, de Queiroz held leadership positions in open-source technology, data, and AI before becoming a chief data scientist. She later joined Microsoft, leading educational advocacy across AI, machine learning, and data science before serving as director of AI at Microsoft for Startups.
At AI Engineer World’s Fair 2024, she helped founders navigate startup-support programs, open-source AI templates, and shared development environments. Her emphasis was concrete: GitHub Codespaces reduces inconsistent local setup, adaptable starter applications accelerate experimentation, and direct access to experienced advisers helps founders address architecture, hiring, and commercialization. Technical demonstrations involving retrieval systems and evaluation were led by other presenters; de Queiroz concentrated on founder support, customization, and making hands-on workshops genuinely usable.
After leaving Microsoft, she founded f02 labs, advising AI startups on positioning, community strategy, technical education, and developer adoption. Her engagements have included fractional developer-relations leadership at Galileo, an AI evaluation company.
- Developer trust is earned through usefulness. Credible demonstrations, clear technical explanations, direct feedback, and established communities help AI products find audiences more effectively than promotional claims alone.
- Access requires infrastructure and human support. Cloud resources, reproducible environments, mentors, scholarships, and peer networks remove different barriers; combining them gives newcomers and founders a stronger chance of making progress.
- Practical AI education should produce working software. Hands-on workshops and customizable application templates turn unfamiliar tools into prototypes participants can test, adapt, and continue developing independently.
