Meet: Prior to LeafLink, Nikhil led the data science function for Gartner’s Marketing practice, gaining deep expertise in building scaled data products for large consumer brands. He has extensive experience in generating insights from e-commerce, search and transactional data leveraging experimentation, machine learning, and implementing business intelligence solutions. Nikhil has also held positions managing data science teams at and consulting F500 clients on marketing and advertising. Currently, Nikhil is responsible for continuing to evolve the data platform that powers the LeafLink marketplace.

What you’ll learn:

Adjusting to a less regulated industry

Building out the data infrastructure

Technology choices and tradeoffs

Meet: Nachi is a Director of Engineering at Electric.AI. Having started his career building software at a large investment bank, he has since transitioned into working for startups based out of NYC. He enjoys the role of being an early technology hire and is passionate about building inclusive & diverse engineering cultures, strong agile practices, and delighting customers.

Topic: Empowering engineers to understand the why behind what they are working on

To connect with Nachi:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/n4ch1k3t/

Meet: Kunal Bhattacharya is a Security Leader, Organization builder, and mentor who helps organizations build robust Cyberdefense and detection capabilities. He does this by building Secure SDL processes and machination encapsulating Shift left strategy, SecDevOps, Cloud, and Penetration testing. Kunal's prior experience in all phases of application development, System and database administration, and Quality engineering have helped him in building lasting relationships with peers in engineering and product organizations and working towards shared security goals. Kunal has worked with Tech Titans like PayPal, Credit Karma, Symantec, etc in the Silicon Valley and has been instrumental in building multiple high-performing organizations in his career.

What you’ll learn:

Moving security from a black box view

Thinking about security earlier in the design and development phase

Mental health aspects for security professionals

If you have any questions for Kunal, please feel free to reach out to him via LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunal-bhattacharya/

Meet: Chris Millikin is the Head of Infrastructure and Security at Nuna.

Prior to Nuna, Chris spent over a decade building security engineering teams focused on detection, response, and security by design at Google as well as Alphabet’s Security “bet”, Chronicle Security.  Chris is passionate about building strong teams and developing them to their full potential and is currently hiring passionate problem solvers.

What you’ll learn:

How a security breach can shape your future views

Applying an innovative mindset to healthcare

Striving for balance in security

If you would like to reach out to Chris about anything discussed on the podcast, please reach out to via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%97%85-chris-millikin-80b2951/

https://www.twitter.com/chrismillikin

Meet: Ben is a Senior Director of Software Engineering at Flatiron Health, where he leads the Machine Learning Team. Prior to Flatiron, he worked at Google on NLP applications for Google Search. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

What you’ll learn:

The impact of machine learning in healthcare data

Solving text classification problems

Can machine learning be overused

If you would like to reach out to Ben about anything discussed on the podcast, please reach out via:

https://twitter.com/benbirnbaum

Meet: Joel Anderson has worked in cybersecurity and IT as an engineer, advisor, and executive with impact across public, private, and social sectors:

- technology leader for over 15 years

- strong focus on information security and emerging technologies

- agile, proven strategic thinker/thought leader relating technology to business value

- experienced leading global teams

What you’ll learn:

CI/CD Business Systems for Performance and Security

Mainland China Deployments

Navigating Compliance as a Growing Company

If you would like to reach out to Joel about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out via:

Meet: Ella Alkalay Schreiber, Head of Pricing and Recommendations she leads a cross-functional team of product managers, data scientists, designers, and engineers in the creation of data-driven fintech products that make travel planning easier, most notably our Price Freeze product. These services leverage our immense first and third-party data to create products and values that do not exist elsewhere. In less than 12 months, Hopper has grown its attach rate of Fintech products on travel bookings from 0% to +50% and today 75% of the company's revenue is derived from them.

As VP of Data Science at Hopper, I was responsible for leading the company’s data science team and building a data-driven culture within the organization. During my time at Hopper, I have tripled the data science team and spearheaded the company’s AI and machine learning efforts which drive over 20% of the company’s sales.

What you’ll learn:

Customer-driven and LTV

New data science features that impact business revenue

Move quickly and optimize later

If you have any questions for Ella, please feel free to reach out to her via LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ella-alkalay-schreiber-94a986a8/

Meet: Wen-Ying is helping revolutionize how data insights can be turned into accelerators for strengthened growth at Plastiq. She has been a leader and champion of analytics and science in both start-up and corporate environments, including LendingClub, Mercari, GREE, Storm8, and eBay.

What you’ll learn:

Impact - address impact, to the business, to yourself to drive results

Project Management - work backward, set deadlines and time tables to ensure successful projects

Effectively communicating - Know your audience

Meet: Sen Xu is the head of engineering at Replica, where he leads the engineering effort to build a scalable data solution to provide movement insights. Prior to Replica, he was at Lyft's self-driving division, Uber, Twitter, and cofounded his own startups in the commodity trading industry.

What you’ll learn:

Moving forward from activities and processes that don’t scale

4 main pillars of engineering management

Scaling requires more specialization

If you would like to reach out to Sen about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sxualex/

Blog mentioned:

https://replicahq.medium.com/reimagining-work-in-the-covid-19-era-1026a5f69845

Meet: Anjali Samani is a Director of Data Science at Salesforce. When we recorded this episode, she was leading the Predictive Modelling team at CircleUp. Anjali has extensive experience in managing and delivering commercial data science projects and has worked with senior decision-makers in startups, Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 businesses, and public sector organizations in the UK and US to enable them to develop their data strategy and execute data science projects. Her roles bridge technical data science and business to identify and execute innovative solutions that leverage proprietary and public data sources to deliver value and drive growth. In her former life, Anjali spent nearly a decade working as a quantitative analyst in asset management, and she has a background in computer science, economics, and mathematics.

What you’ll learn:

Assigning a growth score to a brand

Removing bias from investing

Brand growth in emerging markets

If you have any questions for Anjali, please feel free to reach out to her via:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjalisamani/

https://twitter.com/anjalisamani