Abbass is a professor of data science at USC Marshall School of Business, and he is the director of the MS in Business Analytics program. Professor Sharif specializes is in the field of statistical computing and data visualization and he has developed and published new multivariate visualization techniques for functional data, and currently he is developing visualization techniques to study brain activity data collected via the near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technology. Professor Sharif teaches statistics courses that range from introductory statistics to data analysis for decision-making through to advanced modern statistical learning techniques, statistical computing and data visualization. (Host)

David Waxman is Managing Partner at TenOneTen Ventures, an LA based venture capital firm that invests in data driven businesses. Prior to TenOneTen David has nearly two decades of experience as a technology entrepreneur. After graduating with a masters degree from MIT’s Media Lab in 1995, David co-founded Firefly, an early pioneer in personalization and privacy technology. Firefly was acquired by Microsoft in 1998 where the company’s flagship product became the Microsoft Passport, the web’s first unified authentication and identity platform. After Firefly, David co-founded PeoplePC, a company dedicated to simplifying the process of joining the online world. PeoplePC served over 600,000 individual subscribers as well as Fortune 100 corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Vivendi Universal and Delta Air Lines. PeoplePC went public in 2001 and was acquired by Earthlink in 2002. In 2005, David co-founded SpotRunner, a Los Angeles-based technology company that worked to revolutionize the way advertising was created, planned, bought and sold. Since leaving Spot Runner, David has dedicated his time  as an active mentor, speaker and investor to helping entrepreneurs realize their goals.

Lauren Moores is a data geek and strategist who uses dirty, disparate data to optimize business practices with relevant metrics and insightful stories. Lauren has over 20 years in data and technology strategy, science and data creation in various information and tech industries, including a PhD in Economics from Brown University.  Lauren currently runs data analytics at Tala, a global fintech startup that transforms mobile behavioral and transactional data to provide financial services in emerging economies. She is also a current member of the data advisory board for the USA for UNHCR, a non-profit which supports the UN Refugee Agency. Most recently, Lauren was chief evangelist for Dstillery, a cross-device digital intelligence platform, and chief science officer for EveryScreen Media, a mobile RTB and audience technology company acquired by Dstillery. Prior to EveryScreen, Lauren managed the science, data assets and data engineering teams at WPP’s Kantar Compete, building large, global, multi-sourced digital consumer research panels and consumer analytics. Lauren is an active speaker and writer on innovation through mobile data, technology and analytics, including prior lecturing at Brown, NYU and UCLA.

Maggie Jan is the Director, Developer Advocacy at the analytics company Keen IO. In addition to running Keen IO internal analytics, she teaches classes on analytics, helps customers, and provides analytics mentorship. She also works part-time as a Doctor of Optometry. Prior to Keen IO, Maggie was a Technical Architect at Accenture performing large-scale SAP implementations for Fortune 500 companies.

An expert in analytics and data science, an accomplished entrepreneur, and a successful executive for such Fortune 500 companies as American Express and Sprint, Ian Swanson is at home in both startups and enterprise-level organizations. Swanson is currently the CEO and Founder of DataScience.com, a company that empowers data scientists with best-in-class tools, infrastructure, and expertise. Previously, he founded Sometrics, which launched the industry’s first global virtual currency platform in 2008 and was acquired by American Express in 2011. Prior to Sometrics, Swanson worked for the secure chat and messaging startup, Userplane, which was subsequently acquired by AOL.

Mike’s past work spans a wide range of disciplines, with the recurring theme of developing and applying advanced software and computing technology to understand the physical and virtual world. He was a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 25 years, and also worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Sandpiper Networks/Digital Island. His work has been recognized on multiple occasions, including the Gordon Bell prize for outstanding achievement in high-performance computing. He has degrees in Physics and Engineering & Applied Science from Caltech, and he received a PhD in Physics from University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ben Welsh is the editor of the Los Angeles Times Data Desk, a team of reporters and computer programmers in the newsroom that works to collect, organize, analyze and present large amounts of information. He is also a cofounder of the California Civic Data Coalition, an open-source network of developers working to open up public data, and the creator of PastPages, an archive dedicated to the preservation of online news. Ben has worked at the Los Angeles Times since 2007.  Before working at The Times, Ben conducted data analysis for investigative projects at The Center for Public Integrity in Washington DC. Projects he has contributed to have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Library of Congress' Innovation Award and numerous other prizes for investigative reporting, digital design and online journalism. Ben graduated from DePaul University in 2004. During his time there, he worked with Carol Marin and Don Moseley at the DePaul Documentary Project. He later earned a master’s degree from the Missouri School of Journalism — where he served as a graduate assistant at the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. He is originally from Swisher, Iowa.

Shala has extensive technical, management, marketing and business development background. She has been working at Intel in several roles which spanned from hands on engineering work in super computer and parallel processing with focus on message passing and networking aspect of the system to management running organization focused on operating system and driver development for Intel server platforms before moving to Intel capital. That shift provided Shala with great business insight and equity investment opportunities. Shala is now focused on marketing, promotion and communication for several products and technologies within Intel Software System Technologies and Optimization Division. Shala is also a big advocate for gender equity and one of the co-founders of Women in Big Data.  Shala has BS and MS in Computer Science from Oregon State University.

Keith oversees Data Intelligence for Warner Brothers. The Data Intelligence team aggregates and analyzes data generated from thousands of retailers and hundreds of millions of consumers interacting with Warner Brothers’ content on desktop, TV and mobile platforms. These data and insights are used to design, inform and optimize content, user experiences, advertising and general business decisions. Prior to joining Warner Brothers, Keith led the data & advanced analytics practice at IPG Mediabrands. Keith also worked at Yahoo!, TNS and Deutsch. His expertise includes consumer intelligence, business intelligence, attribution & optimization, database & programmatic marketing enablement.

Sid Mohasseb is a serial entrepreneur, venture investor, professor and speaker. He has built and sold numerous global companies. He has consulted for hundreds of organizations from hyper-growth startups to Fortune 500's. He also teaches Data Science at the University of Southern California.

Eric is a product manager at Google on data processing and analytics working mostly on Google Cloud Dataflow and Dataprep. Previously he worked at AWS on EC2 and at General Electric. He's on the Project Management Committee of the Alluxio open source project and speaks often about Apache Beam. He studied engineering at the University of Utah and received an MBA from Harvard.

Mary Bui-Pham is VP of Operations for Media Brands & Products at Oath. In this role, she is responsible for all day-to-day operations of the Publisher Products team that is responsible for combination of Yahoo and AOL flagship properties such as Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Tumblr, HuffPo, Techcrunch, and more.Mary is an 8-year Yahoo veteran and has held various leadership positions in Program Management, Design, and Business Operations.  Prior to joining Yahoo, Mary led Engineering, Quality, Program Management, and Release Management teams at eBay and DoubleClick. Mary holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, where she conducted computational modeling on Laminar Flames.

Espree Devora (espreedevora.com) "the Girl who Gets it Done" is the Producer and Host of WeAreLATech , "Hello Customer" and #womenintech Podcasts. All have hit #1 on iTunes New & Noteworthy across all categories. She has run the monthly LA podcasters meetup (https://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Podcasters-Meetup/) since 2014. WeAreLATech (wearelatech.com) unites the LA tech community via the podcast, a calendar of all tech events happening in the city and an offline 'Experience' Club. The Club provides people working in tech curated activities to step away from the computer like horseback riding, escape rooms, food tours, archery and more. She has given talks on entrepreneurship to many organizations including USC Business School, CBS, South by Southwest and Georgetown MBA. Most recently she was listed by INC Magazine as one of the top 30 women in tech to follow.

• WeAreLATech Podcast: wearelatech.fm
• #womenintech Podcast: womenintech.fm

Mike is a senior technology adviser for the team - he is passionate about advanced analytics, including streaming analytics, ML & AI and brings over 25 years of large-scale systems design, development, and operations.  Mike, previously was the Technology Leader for the AWS Solutions Architecture team here in Los Angeles, and also worked as a management consultant at various firms including Ernst & Young, & Deloitte Consulting. Mike's experience include providing large-scale systems design and advanced analytics expertise for the Defense Intelligence community. Mike has been a featured speaker at Amazon, Gartner and UCLA Anderson School of Management events. (Sponsored)