The Tech Trek

Meet: Gagan Sandhu, Sr. Engineering Director at Square. He leads the ML, Data Engineering and Mobile engineers within the e-commerce product division at Square.

What you’ll learn:

Machine Learning - How to apply ML effectively to your organization: from getting buy-in for projects, managing expectations, and solving the right problems by working with the right people.

Mentorship - Different strategies for different people and building trust as a leader. Keeping a pulse on your team and creating rituals for your team.

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

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

Meet: Drew Silverstein is the CEO and co-founder of Amper Music. Founded in 2014, Amper Music combines the highest levels of artistry with groundbreaking technology to empower anyone to create unique, professional music, instantly. He is part of the Forbes class of 2018 "30 Under 30" list for music. Prior to Amper Music, Drew was an award-winning composer, producer, and songwriter for film, television, and video games in Los Angeles at Sonic Fuel Studios. Drew graduated from Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music, where he studied Music Composition and Italian and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

What you’ll learn:

How AI affects the speed of music-making and the amount of content produced

Evolution of music composition and tools

Economic impact of using AI to create music

If you would like to reach out to Drew about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via LinkedIn or Twitter:

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

https://twitter.com/DrewSilverstein

Meet: Adam Robertson is a DevOps Leader with more than 15 years of professional experience architecting and building technical organizations from early-stage startups to established long-running companies. Starting young at the beginning of the internet revolution he had a natural proclivity to everything technical and was building computers for friends and family by his early teens. After spending most of his teenage years working in various computer shops he attended the University of Texas at Austin where he earned his BS in Computer Science. Shortly after he made the move to Silicon Valley to join the fast pace of the startup culture and has been loving it ever since.

What you’ll learn:

What is the tipping point that brings about change

Modern DevOps practices are more about getting people involved, not replacing people

Reengineering a solution requires you to understand the problems they were trying to solve

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

Meet: Jude Gomila is currently CEO and Founder of the startup Golden. Jude Gomila was previously President and Co-Founder of Heyzap (Union Square Ventures and Y Combinator funded in 2009) which sold to Fyber for $45m in 2016. He has also made over 200 angel investments into startups.

What you’ll learn:

Focusing on solving search issues

Applying trust to a data source and resolving the conflicts between different sources

Converting the firehouse of data and applying structure

If you would like to connect with Jude:

http://www.judegomila.com/

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

Meet: Kunal Haria, Data Engineering Manager at StyleSeat. He has his Masters in Information Management from Syracuse University.

What you’ll learn:

Interviewing - tips for data engineers, from resumes to whiteboarding

Transition to Management - lessons learned going from a lead to a manager

Buy vs Build - how to evaluate to build in-house vs buying an off the shelf solution

If you want to connect with Kunal, please reach out to him via Medium: https://medium.com/@dataengineering

Meet: Phillip Schafer leads the data science team at IronNet. He has a PhD in physics from Penn State, where he developed voice recognition algorithms modeled on the human brain's processing of speech. He previously worked on algorithms for pricing and dispositioning returned retail goods at retail startup Optoro. At IronNet, he has implemented machine learning models to help enterprises defend themselves against sophisticated cyber attacks. He lives in Columbia, Md., with his wife and two-year-old son.

What you’ll learn:

Moving from academia to the business world

Data science challenges within the cybersecurity industry

Transitioning to a management role and moving away from being an individual contributor

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

https://www.linkedin.com/in/phillip-schafer/

Meet: Ryan Scolnik, the Head of Data Science at FortressIQ. He was employee #4 and currently leads the company's data science, computer vision and AI strategy. Ryan holds a PhD in Statistics from Florida State University and enjoys Kaggle competitions and long bike rides in his spare time.

What you’ll learn:

Being the 1st Data hire - lessons learned and finding data vs simulating data

Transition to being a manager - be prepared for more meetings, less coding and lots of communicating

Ego and Coding - trusting your team and letting your ego go

If you want to follow up with Ryan, please connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-scolnik-5718193a/

Meet: Michael Weiss has spent the past 16 years in information security. While at Microsoft, he managed the Security Assurance Program for Windows 7. His latest role is as Chief Information Security Officer at Funding Circle, a fintech small business lender based in London.

What you’ll learn:

Look to security adjacent roles to find your next security hire

natural interest in security is one of your best paths to getting hired for your first security role

Security takes a back seat if you don’t have a champion

You can connect with Michael via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weissmichaela/

Meet: Shailvi Wakhlu, the Head of Analytics at Komodo Health. She loves to volunteer, mentor, and inspire within the data and analytics community.

What you’ll learn:

Resume and Interviewing - tips for analysts

Women in Data - how to share your achievements

Women in Data - job promotion advice

The best way to connect with Shailvi is on Twitter - @ShailviW

Meet: Daniel Barber is the CEO & Co-founder of DataGrail. In the new age of privacy, DataGrail is the only purpose-built privacy management platform that ensures sustained compliance with the GDPR, CCPA, and forthcoming regulation. Prior to DataGrail, Daniel led revenue teams at DocuSign, Datanyze (acquired by ZoomInfo), ToutApp (acquired by Marketo), and Responsys (acquired by Oracle). He also advises several high-growth startups including Chorus.ai, Outreach.io, and SignOnSite.

What you’ll learn:

- Privacy is not optional and how to protect yourself

- The manual complexities around handling privacy requests resulting from CCPA and GDPR

- The benefits of automating privacy deletion requests and the risk of something slipping through the cracks

If you would like to reach out to Daniel about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via LinkedIn or Twitter:

https://twitter.com/gaijindan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-barber/