Favio Vazquez is the Principal Data Scientist at OXXO: Mexico's largest convenience store chain with over 17,500 locations.

In addition to his work at OXXO, Favio brings new meaning to the term "polymath" by simultaneously holding 5 other related positions at AI companies in Mexico:

• Senior Data Scientist @ Raken Data Group
• Chief Data Scientist @ Iron AI
• Creator of the Ciencias y Datos online course
• Data Science Lecturer @ Afi Escuela de Finanzas
• Collaborator @ CosmoSIS

With such a wide-ranging background, we covered a lot in this conversation, including:

• Favio's experience growing up in Venezuela, the childhood influencers that played a core part in shaping him into who he is today
• Tricks like "frontloading" and "batching" that Favio uses to juggle many projects at once
• How individuals looking to get hired as a company's first data scientist should explain the value that data science can provide, what language to use and terminology to avoid
• His approach for determining which questions would yield the most valuable return in applying data science to OXXO's business
• The greatest similarities and differences between how data science is practiced in Mexico versus the United States
• When and how beginners should invest in learning advanced topics like big data processing (e.g. Apache Spark) and deep learning (e.g. neural networks)

Enjoy the show!

 

Show Notes: https://ajgoldstein.com/podcast/ep11/

Favio's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faviovazquez/

AJ's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajgoldstein393/