The Tech Trek

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

Meet: Allen Ko is a data science manager working at States Title, where he's leading the company's efforts to automate document processing and parsing. He has a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering and loves to spend his free time hiking and wandering in the outdoors.

What you’ll learn:

Transitioning to the data industry via Metis

Stepping up to a manager role

More integration with the product team

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

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

Meet: Connan has a strong background in Economics with his Ph.D. and has also taught at UCLA as a professor. He was a Data Scientist at Uber for over 4 years before taking over the Data Science team at Just Auto Insurance.

What you’ll learn:

Hiring for your Data team - a balanced team for success

Future of Data Scientists - evolving requirements and technical skills

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) - an example from Uber

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

https://www.linkedin.com/in/connan-snider-4249311b/

Meet: Anson Whitmer - Head of Data. After completing a Ph.D., then a post-doc at Stanford, in cognitive neuroscience, Anson transitioned into data science.   He is now the director of data at Calm, a company that he help build up, as the first data hire, to its current unicorn+ status

What you’ll learn:

Fueling growth by discovering a new uses case for a product

Employe number 10 and first data hire

Prioritization - Focusing on delivering the most value for the business

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

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

http://www.ansonwhitmer.com/

Meet: Daniel Gremmell is the Head of Data at Policygenius where he leads data engineering, data analysis, and data science. Before Policygenius, he was VP of Data Science at Plated. Daniel has experience in numerous industries including automotive, aerospace, and publishing. Daniel holds 2 master's degrees including an MS in Statistics from Rochester Institute of Technology.

What you’ll learn:

Finding ways to identify new requirements

Importance of having accurate views of the job and company you will be joining

Evaluating soft skills through virtual interviewing

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

www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-gremmell-6953842b

Meet: Peter has held management-level positions at Hearst and Freestar, before landing at Teachable, where he is the Head of Data. He also has his MBA from NYU.

What you’ll learn:

Building your data science team - case study and lessons learned

3rd party applications - pros/cons and the debate, to build in-house or buy

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

https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-jaffe-4b18a66/