Sadie St Lawrence is the Founder and CEO of Women in Data, the #1 Community for Women in AI and Tech. She has trained over 350,000 people in data science and has developed multiple programs in machine learning and career development. Sadie was named 10 Most Admired Business Women to Watch in 2021, and has been listed as a Top 21 Influencer in Data.  Her work has been featured in USA Today, Dataversity, and she is the recipient of the Outstanding Service Award from UC Davis.  In addition, she serves on multiple start-up boards, and is the host of the Data Bytes podcast. In her free time, you will find Sadie painting abstract art or sitting in the sun daydreaming about the future. 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Yannic Kilcher. Yannic is a YouTuber covering state of the art Machine Learning research topics. He has a PhD from ETH Zurich and is currently the CTO of DeepJudge, a LegalTech NLP startup. In this episode we learn about how Yannic decided on a PHD in Ai, how he is able to make advanced research so digestable, and the reason why he wears sunglasses on camera. I hope you enjoy the epsisode, I know I enjoyed our conversation.

Ben has spent his entire adult life trying to understand how the world works by looking at the stories buried in data. Ben's career in data started in 1998 at the telecom industry with the company MCI. Since then Ben has consulted at silicon valley’s biggest companies and led the charge at Pluralsight to become a data-driven organization and help millions elevate their skillsets.
In 2016 Ben shifted gears towards helping fight climate change and leave a better world for future generations. Ben's efforts in that space involve helping people decide to drive electric as well as living more sustainably with renewable energy solutions.
Today Ben continues to help people develop their skillsets at Free the Data Academy and inspire people to live more sustainably on YouTube. In our conversation today, we learn about Ben’s journey into data and why he things goal setting is complete BS. I think you will enjoy our healthy debate on the topic!

00:00 Introduction
02:07 How did you initially become interested in data?
06:50 How did you know what to learn throughout your career?
11:55 How did you progress your data science career?
16:53 Great team workflow tips
39:38 How did you start your online platforms?
53:27 Final remarks

Ben's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BenSullinsDataGeekChannel

 Naveed Ahmed Janvekar is a Senior Data Scientist working at Amazon in the United States. He works on solving fraud and abuse problems on the platform that impacts millions of customers of Amazon in the US and other parts of the world using Machine Learning and deep learning. He has 7+ years of expertise in the Machine Learning space which includes classification algorithms, clustering algorithms, graph modeling, BERT to name a few. He is using Machine Learning and Deep Learning to solve multi-faceted problems. He has a Master's degree in Information Science from The University of Texas at Dallas and graduated top of his class and awarded as scholar of high distinction and inducted in the prestigious International Honor Society Beta Gamma Sigma. He has a Bachelor's of Engineering in Electronics and Communications from India. He has worked with other influential firms such as Fidelity Investments and KPMG. In his current role he is researching on identifying novel fraud and abuse vectors on ECommerce platforms and using Active Learning to improve Machine Learning model performance. 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Seamus McGovern. Seamus is the founder of the Open Data Science Conference otherwise known as ODSC. One of the world's leading successful AI conferences. ODSC runs numerous virtual and in person data science conferences around the globe. Seamus also founded ai plus training, which is dedicated to bridging the AI talent gap with on demand live training programs. He's a technologist with over 25 years of experience in software, data engineering and AI. And in our conversation, we dive into how Seamus integrates project management into his life, and how his passion for learning was multiplied when he first found conferences. I happen to be speaking at one of the ODSC events coming up, and I hope you'll join me I'll be there in person. I'd love to meet all of you. I really enjoyed this conversation with Seamus he's fun, he's animated and I think you will too.

Open Data Science website: https://odsc.com/boston/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw3IqSBhCoARIsAMBkTb3sflc3UAtTaUUg2EUlYpnWW2fSmg_HkdacFTFMWU4r6pAnR7-a4RAaAhAVEALw_wcB

Get a free pass to see my Keynote speech sat ODSC East April 21st here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/odsc-east-2022-in-person-and-virtual-talks-and-keynotes-pass-bronze-tickets-301301690467

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing  @Sundas Khalid . Be sure to check out her YouTube Channel! Sundas is a data science leader and a passionate advocate for diversity in the workplace. Sundas currently works at Google as Sr. Analytical Lead, leading Google Search Engine analytics. Prior to Google, Sundas was at Amazon where she received awards for her work as a data science leader driving large-scale experimentations and data science initiatives. Sundas is the first woman in her family to graduate college, her journey is one of persistence and resilience, and has been featured on Forbes and Google's Data Analytics Professional Certificate on Coursera.

As the first-female in her family to graduate university, she is an advocate of women's education and workforce diversity, and actively participate in diversity, equity & inclusion within and outside of Google.   In her free time, she enjoys public speaking and creating educational content on various platforms on data science, career and financial literacy. In 2021, Sundas help women of color negotiate $1.4M in job offers. In this interview we dive into how Sundas made such an incredible career transition from taking some time off through data engineering and eventually into data science.

00:00 Introduction
02:57 How did your data journey begin?
09:22 Navigating in data science with a career gap.
11:22 After internship experience.
15:00 Tips on leveraging internships.
22:04 Transitioning from data engineering to data science.
29:11 Transitioning to a company with a strong culture.
33:00 Benefits of working at a large company.
36:45 Tools that large tech companies use.
40:29 Application process for FAANG companies.
46:33 YouTube journey.
57:56 Final remarks.

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Richad Nieves Becker. Richad is a self-taught data scientist with an eclectic background. He currently leads the data science function at Revantage, a real estate shared service organization in the Blackstone family, and enjoys regularly sharing his perspective on the field on LinkedIn. Richad got a BA in Neuroscience and Anthropology and was on the PhD path until he realized a life of basic research was not for him. He pivoted and earned a Masters in Commerce (concentration in Marketing and Management) from the University of Virginia where he met me. After a brief stint in inside sales, Richad committed to data science and built his career in the real estate and finance spaces. He started at CoreLogic focusing on text mining, then moved to Greystone leading all things data in an innovation lab, before joining Revantage. Richad credits his career progress to focusing on impact and deeply understanding the business case. In this interview we gain some insight into the specifics of data in the real estate domain and we learn about how Richad was able to go from analyst to director level in less than 4 years. 

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Ajay Halthor ( @CodeEmporium ). Ajay is a Data Scientist with an interesting life story. Born in Los Angeles, he spent half his life in the States and the other half India. He dabbles in all that is data during the weekdays. And on weekends, you'll find him on a mountain. Today we’ll talk about his journey from a Computer Science major in India to Data Scientist and YouTube content creator & educator he is today. 

00:00 Introduction
02:36 How did you get interested in data?
09:52 Different experiences between living in India and the United States.
13:26 The importance of getting out of your comfort zone.
19:41 Differences between education in the USA vs India.
24:09 Path to becoming a data science educator.
38:40 How do you make content easy to understand for your audience?
43:51 How do you evaluate your content?
47:02 YouTube Comedy Skits.
50:20 The importance of getting outdoors.
54:49 Final remarks.

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Demetrios Brinkmann. Demetrios is one of the main organizers of the MLOps Community and currently resides in a small town outside Frankfurt, Germany. He is an avid traveler who taught English as a second language to see the world and learn about new cultures. Brinkmann fell into the Machine Learning Operations world, and since, has interviewed the leading names around MLOps, Data Science, and Machine Learning. Since diving into the nitty-gritty of ML Operations he felt a strong calling to explore the ethical issues surrounding AI/ML. He loves how communities tick and their inner workings so much so it has become one of his passions. When he is not conducting interviews you can find him making stone sackings with his daughter in the woods or playing the ukulele by the campfire. In this episode we learn about how Demetrios was able to grow an incredible community and some of the growing pains he faced when scaling, we also learn about how he avoids burnout and his love for ice baths. 

Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing Andres Slaughter. Andres is a digital marketing specialist who has worked in various capacities for over 5 years. He’s worked in several sectors including technology, education, and food services with nearly 10 years of experience in marketing. He runs a YouTube channel called Andres Slaughter where he discusses the oddities of life and dives into topics to improve your life. He also is a part-time content creator known as StatsPanda on Instagram where he makes data visualizations about interesting topics. He’s the youngest person to receive a graduate degree in the state of Oklahoma and one of the youngest managers of a global 300 company - Compass Group. In today’s episode, we talk about how Andres was able to grow and manage a community around his data visualizations, we also learn about what makes a compelling visual, and about how he was able to land on the front page of Reddit with his work multiple times.