2020 Data Con LA

Karen is creator and Executive Director of LA Tech4Good, an early stage nonprofit startup at the intersection of social impact and technology in SoCal. She is compelled to create space for people to engage in battles raging over tech and society, and to move the needle on tech as a force for social change in unprecedented times. Her career path has ranged across digital transformations in publishing and printing, from Hollywood to nonprofit, and now focuses on expanding the breadth and depth of “tech for good.”

Xavier Kochhar is a media and technology executive, entrepreneur, investor, and direct-to-consumer subject matter expert. He is best known as the founder and CEO of The Video Genome Project, a video personalization engine and user experience company that built the largest, broadest, and most granular structured database of video content, by developing a method of finding and creating deep, relevant and granular information on video content (film, tv, online video), programmatically. These granular pieces of altogether new metadata, or “genes”, were then used to provide hyper-personalized recommendations and targeted content to consumers. Because of its accuracy and simplicity in the video discovery process, the company became known as “the Google of video”. The Video Genome Project was acquired by Hulu to create a more powerful way to surface the right content to the right user at the right time, in both live and on-demand environments. Currently a senior executive within AT&T, Inc., Xavier was most recently the chief strategy and business development officer of WarnerMedia's Direct-to-Consumer division. He was previously the Managing Partner of Medialink, acq. by Ascential plc (LSE: ASCL), and has served in senior executive roles at The Walt Disney Company, the William Morris Agency (WME), and L.E.K. Consulting.

Jeanne is the Chief Data Officer and Senior Technology Advisor to the Mayor at the City of Los Angeles, helping 4,000,000 people use data for innovation, equity, health and safety, and founded the Data Science Federation. She was formerly the Evangelist for open data for the White House under President Obama, the leader for Africa open data for the World Bank, and the Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA, and is a Distinguished Instructor at UCLA, a Trustee of Claremont Graduate University, a Fellow of the United Nations International Academy of Astronautics, on the Global Leadership Board for Time's Up, and an advisor to the UN.

Savina Hawkins is an entrepreneur with a successful exit to a tech unicorn under her belt as well as a professional interdisciplinary user researcher. She employs a design-research approach to entrepreneurship and innovation. Both her masters and undergrad degrees were in self-designed, interdisciplinary fields: she studied networked narratology, text technologies, symbolic systems and the self at Stanford, and she studied democratic innovation, advanced technologies, smart cities, the politics of aesthetics and philosophy of design at Harvard Design School.

Todd Terrazas is a social entrepreneur, collaboration catalyst, and the Executive Director of the AI LA Community and Data 4 Good non-profits. Todd has over a decade of experience working in the LA startup community, developing products, marketing strategies, brand identities, and producing events to educate, inspire, and accelerate innovation for social good.

Joe is a serial entrepreneur who has been helping grow the Los Angeles tech ecosystem since 2008, before Silicon Beach was a "thing." His experience includes co-founder at Diamond (https://diamond.la), an inclusive digital agency, and thought leadership as the co-founder of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (https://globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/).

Bryce is the Inclusive Lead for Microsoft Devices where he is devoted to ensuring Microsoft products are accessible. Bryce initiated and designed the first Inclusive Tech Lab at Microsoft, which has now hosted over seven thousand visitors; it is a facility where people can explore how people with disabilities interact with Microsoft games, services, and devices. Bryce is one of the inventors of the Xbox Adaptive Controller ever since he was a lead on its project at the 2016 Microsoft One Week Hackathon.

Lori Samuels is the Accessibility Director at NBCUniversal. She leads strategic accessibility programs to institute best practices in inclusive design, provide training for product teams, drive cultural maturity in disability inclusion, and fortify executive sponsorship.

Karo co-leads Accessibility (or a11y) initiatives at Google Play. She ensures that the Play products can be accessible by users with diverse needs. In this role, she helps to create the culture in which a11y is a core part of the product development cycle. Through various Play initiatives for external developers, she brings a11y awareness to app developers throughout the world. She has a PhD in Education. Outside of work, she writes novels and poetry and enjoys bringing her creativity back to her day job.

Michelle is a second year volunteer at Data Con LA. She is passionate about innovations which transform the tech industry like Code Talk, TechHire and TEALS. She has lived in Los Angeles her entire life, has two daughters, enjoys running, biking and roller skating.

Ericka ia an African-American female tech geek. She chose to change careers in late 2017 and began her journey. She discovered a passion for frontend development. Getting into the industry has not been easy but the pursuit of her passion is worth it. She graduated CodeTalk in January 2019 and she was very grateful for that program.

Lima has enjoyed hercareer journey thus far and she is happy to currently be working in tech at the Honest Company as a Quality Assurance Analyst. She is responsible for supporting the business team (DTC & Engineering) by ensuring feature releases and promotions satisfy all specifications and requirements. She looks forward to continuing to be an asset to the Honest QA, DTC, and Engineering team and collaborating on many projects to come. Entering the world of tech a couple of years ago has been a wonderful transition to changing my trajectory. She holds degrees from the University of California, Davis (BS), Grand Canyon University (MBA), and a certificate from Code talk (Front End Web Dev), which all play a huge part in her continued desire for better opportunities in tech to grow and reach career milestones.

Miesha Robinson is a serial entrepreneur and tech leader in the events industry. She is the founder & CEO of Ucrowd LLC which is a ticketing platform for event curators and attendees to create, discover and sell tickets online. After earning her bachelors degree in Marketing from California State University Dominguez Hills, Miesha began to successfully advance in the corporate world while simultaneously developing several businesses and organizations to encourage the youth in the inner city to explore technology and entrepreneurship.

Linda is a full stack developer at the City of Los Angeles Mayor's Office of International Affairs, working on the Sustainable Development Goals Data Reporting Platform.

Tahnee Bedward is a Software Developer at a Property Management company in the Los Angeles area. Tahnee has a background in Biotechnology, holding several positions within the field at companies such as Kite Pharma and Gilead Sciences. Tahnee holds a Bachelors degree in Biology from California State University Northridge. Her love for technology was birthed from her father who has many years of experience in the field. This love has led her to make the recent transition to Tech.

Since 1984, NHS has developed and rehabilitated more than 25,600 housing and commercial units, placed 4.6 million families on the road to homeownership, created 247 block clubs, employed over 250 neighborhood youth, and invested more than $7.1 billion back into some of Los Angeles County’s toughest neighborhoods. NHS protects more than $2.2 billion of home values annually through its loss mitigation, preservation, and counseling work.

Harnham is the global lead in data & analytics recruitment with expertise in Data Science, Data & Technology, Marketing Analytics and Digital Analytics. Kris leads the data science and machine learning team and built out the Southern California Data Science market for Harnham. She has successfully led and filled multiple searches ranging from senior data scientist up to CTO level.

Karla helps lead the Data Science & AI recruitment practice at Harnham, the global leader in Data & Analytics recruitment. She partners with top companies to hire the most in-demand professionals in the Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision and NLP space.

Kerry Weinberg leads Data Science for Digital Health & Innovation at Amgen. Her team focuses on applying emerging data analytic techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve Amgen’s agility, better reach patients, and improve digital health by better identifying patients, treating them, and enabling their adherence. Prior to this role, Kerry led AI strategy for Process Development at Amgen. Before joining Amgen, Kerry received her MBA and M.S. Biological Engineering from MIT as part of the Leaders for Global Operations Program. She previously led systems engineering efforts for high-speed cell sorters at Beckman Coulter. Kerry holds a B.S. Biological Engineering also from MIT.

As a data science leader, Sonali's passion is to deliver value & impact to both people and product through data, analytics, models, and algorithms. Today she primarily does this by building and scaling data science at Snap by aligning specialized skills with business strategy, leading teams, and building effective partnerships with other organizations.

Stacey Ronaghan is a Senior Data Scientist at IBM, working with customers across a range of industries. As a practitioner, she facilitates their AI journey: from identifying key opportunities within their business to writing the code that solves the problem. Stacey is an advocate for Responsible AI and has contributed to open source packages for AI Fairness and AI Explainability.

Chris Fregly is a Developer Advocate for AI and Machine Learning at Amazon Web Services (AWS) based in San Francisco, California. He is co-author of the O'Reilly Book, "Data Science on AWS." Chris is also the Founder of many global meetups focused on Apache Spark, TensorFlow, and KubeFlow. He regularly speaks at AI and Machine Learning conferences across the world including O’Reilly AI & Strata, Open Data Science Conference (ODSC), and GPU Technology Conference (GTC). Previously, Chris was Founder at PipelineAI where he worked with many AI-first startups and enterprises to continuously deploy ML/AI Pipelines using Apache Spark ML, Kubernetes, TensorFlow, Kubeflow, Amazon EKS, and Amazon SageMaker.

Jess Haberman is senior acquisitions editor at O'Reilly Media, collaborating with tech industry leaders to develop instructional content related to data science, data engineering, and data architecture. She is a writer, managing multiple writing and discussion groups. She has presented at and facilitated technical conferences, publishing seminars, and writing retreats. Jess has worked in publishing for 13 years.

Dean Wampler is an expert in data engineering for scalable streaming data systems and applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI). He is a Principal Software Engineer at Domino Data Lab. Previously he worked at Anyscale and Lightbend, where he worked on scalable ML with Ray and distributed streaming data systems with Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, and other tools. Dean is the author of several books and reports published by O'Reilly on data systems and programming topics.

Rustem Feyzkhanov is a machine learning engineer at Instrumental, where he work on analytical models for the manufacturing industry, and AWS Machine Learning Hero. Rustem is passionate about serverless infrastructure (and AI deployments on it) and is the author of the course and book "Serverless Deep Learning with TensorFlow and AWS Lambda" and "Practical Deep Learning on the Cloud". Also he is a main contributor to open source repository for serverless packages https://github.com/ryfeus/lambda-packs.

Robert Munro is an expert in combining Human and Machine Intelligence, working with Machine Learning approaches to Text, Speech, Image and Video Processing. Robert has founded several AI companies, building some of the top teams in Artificial Intelligence. He has worked in many diverse environments, from Sierra Leone, Haiti and the Amazon, to London, Sydney and Silicon Valley, in organizations ranging from startups to the United Nations.

CEO & Chief Data Scientist at Catalit Data Science. Author of the Zero to Deep Learning book and video course. I work at the cutting edge of machine and deep learning training.

Jagjit comes to the County of Los Angeles with 17+ years of diversified IT consulting experience across multiple industry domains including Media & Entertainment (Studio, Education & Gaming), Telecom, Banking, Insurance and Manufacturing domains across different geographical locations globally. His main focus has been on IT transformation, operations efficiencies, enterprise initiatives, application modernization, and the adaption of emerging technologies. He has a wealth of experience in supporting complex systems delivery in a global onsite/offshore operating environment and managing large diverse teams.

Kevin Gray is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the City of Burbank California. His vision and leadership drives the City’s Digital Government Initiatives, ensuring effective and efficient utilization of digital technology to improve city services, create new efficiencies, enhance public safety, promote and enhance economic development, improve transportation and mobility, improve sustainability and enhance the quality of life for the City’s residents, day-time population and visitors.

Jeanne is the Chief Data Officer and Senior Technology Advisor to the Mayor at the City of Los Angeles, helping 4,000,000 people use data for innovation, equity, health and safety, and founded the Data Science Federation. She was formerly the Evangelist for open data for the White House under President Obama, the leader for Africa open data for the World Bank, and the Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA, and is a Distinguished Instructor at UCLA, a Trustee of Claremont Graduate University, a Fellow of the United Nations International Academy of Astronautics, on the Global Leadership Board for Time's Up, and an advisor to the UN.

Lea Eriksen is the Director of Technology and Innovation and CIO of the City of Long Beach and is in charge of implementing the City’s technology vision, developing a staff of 173 FTE and managing a $57.2 million operating budget. With more than 20 years of experience working in local government, Lea’s background includes positions related to economic development, budget and finance, and technology. She has an MBA from Xavier University and graduated cum laude from Miami University.

Phillip is an award winning CIO leading the City of Pasadena’s technology strategy, IT operations and customer service. His initiatives include improving service delivery through embracing effective use of technology; creating business models for delivering new services; promoting online development opportunities to increase self-service capabilities; and leading strategic initiatives to transform and innovate.

The Entrepreneur Philosopher, is a Serial Entrepreneur, Angel Investor, University Professor, Innovator and Business Thought Leader. Sid has built and exited multiple global companies, invested in various start-ups, advised many of the fortune 500 executives, and has served as the national innovation leader for a conglomerate. Sid is a best selling author and teaches strategy and analytics at both USC's Marshall Business School and Viterbi Engineering school.

John Harbison is Chairman Emeritus of Tech Coast Angels where he has led 14 deals, invested in over 60 startups, and serves on multiple Boards including the Angel Capital Association. He is also an active investor in public companies, and has realized returns from 100x – 1100x in five companies (Microsoft, Apple, Abbott Labs, Nucor and McGraw-Hill). Previously he co-founded Next Autoworks (a disruptive new American car company backed by Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures), served as CEO of network security software SilentRunner Inc. (which was acquired by Computer Associates) and launched Valeo Raytheon Systems (the first blindspot radar for cars that achieved $700 million in annual revenue within eight years).

Nader Fathi is a serial entrepreneur and veteran of the Big Data and IoT industry. He is currently the CEO of Kiana Analytics, recently included in Gartner’s ”CIO Guide: How Location Services Can Help Mitigate COVID-19 Spread

Rebecca is a founder, connector, and a self proclaimed gov geek and public sector enthusiast. She is driven to improve the business of government technology through innovation, enhanced communication and collaboration. She has 15 years of experience including consulting at a leading professional services firm, managing gov tech education events and strategic workshop delivery, and project management and execution.

Tinkerer, maker, and all around gearhead. Sacramento native and proud CSUS alumni with a BS in Mechanical Engineering, Nicholas Haystings is the co-founder and executive director of Square Root Academy, an organization that provides STEM-based education and experiences to underrepresented groups, all at no cost to the participants. The program works with several local school district to provide after-school programming for fifth- through 12-graders, while also sponsoring STEM-focused community events. The Sacramento Business Journal named Haystings to its 2019 “40 Under 40” list, which recognizes young professionals in the Sacramento region who “excel in their workplaces and in their communities.”

Lindsay Poirier is a cultural anthropologist and recent PhD in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her research examines digital expertise, data cultures, and the theorization of digital infrastructure. More specifically, Poirier studies the design of “semiotic infrastructures” – or digital infrastructures that encode data’s syntax, semantics, and relationships to other data. She examines how the designers of semiotic infrastructure learn to bring diverse language ideologies to their work and how such language ideologies implicate how knowledge gets ordered in information systems. She has conducted historical research on approaches to digital knowledge representation in the artificial intelligence community and has conducted fieldwork within both the Semantic Web community and a community of practitioners building data standards for the human services. Poirier is the lead platform architect for the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE) – an open source digital humanities platform, which now supports several international research projects, including The Asthma Files and the Disaster STS Network. She is also a co-chair for the Empirical Humanities Metadata working group within the Research Data Alliance (RDA). Her most recent publications include “Devious Design: Digital Infrastructure Challenges in Experimental Ethnography,” published in the journal Design Issues and “A Turn for the Scruffy: An Ethnographic Study of Semantic Web Architecture,” published in the WebSci’17 Conference Proceedings.

Samta Kapoor is a Senior Manager at Accenture with over 10 years experience leading large transformations, helping clients drive innovation and optimizing business processes. She earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, has a Masters degree in Engineering Management from Duke University, and is an Electronics and Telecommunications engineer. At Accenture Samta focuses on growing the Financial Services and the Resources business for Applied Intelligence on the West coast. She is a part of the high value consulting team. She enjoys using her technical and business skills to help clients achieve their strategic goals by “Thinking in the New.” Working in Chile and Argentina has given her global exposure and a beginner level proficiency in Spanish. Specialties: Business Skills: Retail Banking,Value Targeting,Customer Analytics,Marketing Analytics Data and Technology Strategy, Business Strategy, Account Management (Mining and Hunting).

Throughout his career, Vince has been at his most passionate and creative in roles where he lead efforts to operationalize visionary thinking. His strength is in taking big ideas and building road maps to get us there - especially by evangelizing, simplifying, and democratizing data. With an extensive background in data analysis, he has worked proudly to lift the “fog of war” over statistics and demystify number-crunching. As a recovering analyst, he is unapologetic in his belief that the most successful organizations lead from the heart, rather than the head. Vince currently helps public sector clients design, build, and strategize experience management programs at Qualtrics where his team helps government and education harness the most relevant data to improve outcomes for their constituents. Prior to joining Qualtrics, he led a feedback and analytics group at King County, WA, that managed employee, customer, and resident insights. Vince holds a master’s degree in Public Policy with concentrations in Public and Nonprofit Leadership and Management and Urban and Regional Affairs from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He is also proud UT Longhorn, having received his dual bachelor’s degrees from the University of Texas in Austin, TX. Hook 'em!

Rob Richardson is a software craftsman building web properties in ASP.NET and Node, React and Vue. He’s a Microsoft MVP, published author, frequent speaker at conferences, user groups, and community events, and a diligent teacher and student of high quality software development. You can find this and other talks on https://robrich.org/presentations.

Zia is the lead data scientist with theDevMasters, a California based data science consulting and training company. Zia holds a Masters degree in Computer Science with an MBA combined with over 20 years of professional work experience. Zia’s consulting portfolio includes healthcare companies, manufacturers and Start-ups. He is also the lead instructor for the data science bootcamp offered by theDevMasters. Prior to joining theDevMasters Zia worked with Bell Canada as a Solution Specialist for Data Centre and cloud computing technologies. Zia is passionate about driving information from data.

Abe is the founder and CEO of Padfever, a rent transparency company. Previously, he was a data engineering consultant who worked with start ups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He found his footing in data engineering at Cloudera where he was part of the team that modernized Hue. He also contributed to several Hadoop ecosystem components including Hadoop itself.