Speakers – 2021

SAP Business Intelligence Manager at Accenture

Ajali is a senior manager at Accenture leading and championing analytics transformations across large organizations.

Sr. Product Manager, Product Strategy at Fox

Product management and strategy leader with hands-on experience in web, mobile, and OTT product development, data analysis, data science, and growth. Over 12 years' experience in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Middle East. My role in the industry involves comprehending customers needs and behaviors and creating and maintaining high-value products. Alex's skills and tools for product management include managing the ideation phase, planning the technical development, user funnel optimization, data analytics, UX design, managing data science projects, setting product strategies, and A/B testing. Former trainer and consultant for multiple software and e-commerce companies in MENA and Silicon Valley. Mentor at Oasis500 and Techwadi accelerators. Started my career as a live radio show host, and worked for leading online companies in Dubai, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, San Francisco and Los Angeles such as Jeeran, Airbrake, Rackspace, Instana, Rollbar, Spark Networks, and FOX Networks Group. Currently, Alex leads the Product Strategy Team at Fox, manages a team of data analysts, advices the leadership in critical projects, and creates data-informed product roadmaps.

Senior Strategist- Content & Planning at Amazon Studios

Alex is a Senior Strategist at Amazon Studios, where he focuses on using data to make recommendations for IMDb TV's Content & Planning team. Prior to joining Amazon Studios, Alex held strategy roles at WarnerMedia, AT&T, and 21st Century Fox.

Director of Engineering at SecurityScoreCard

Alex is an energetic technologist and business strategist, passionate about engineering, diversity and cultural growth. He also enjoys leading teams, writing code, finding value in data, designing large-scale systems and providing a unified product vision. You will probably catch Alex with an athletic bag on his shoulders... He is a bit of a sports junkie and particularly a Crossfit addict, who has been known to create an epidemic of fitness and weight loss around him, so beware!

Faculty & Doctoral Candidate/Owner & Data Scientist at Pepperdine University/Los Angeles Data Analytics

Alfonso Berumen has over 10 years of experience in consulting where he has provided data-driven economic, statistical, and analytical support to law firms, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and private companies operating in a wide range of industries. He is currently a Faculty Member and Doctorate in Business Administration Candidate at Pepperdine University and holds a Masters in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University, Masters in Business Administration from the University of California, Irvine and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Occidental College.

Product Designer at Meta

Alison is Product Designer at Meta with a background in Data Science and Fashion. Alison has worked as a multidisciplinary designer building data visualization heavy products for brands such as Starbucks, SESAC, WarnerChappell, SONY/ATV and FINRA, and also worked as a Data Analyst for General Assembly. Committed to life long learning, Alison regularly takes bootcamp courses, but also teaches courses in Experience Design and Data Science and Data Analytics.

Azure Consultant at Cluster Reply

Alpa is an azure consultant with a passion for data and technology at Cluster Reply. Alpa has around 12 years' experience as software developer and have worked in a variety of projects. She is MCT and Speaker.

Chief AI Officer at Unscrambl

Anand Ranganathan is a co-founder and the Chief AI Officer at Unscrambl. He is leading Unscrambl's product development in several cutting-edge areas, including natural language processing, automated insights, data story-telling, and marketing optimization. Before joining Unscrambl, he was a Master Inventor and Research Scientist at IBM. He received his PhD in Computer Science from UIUC, and his BTech from the IIT-Madras. He also has over 70 academic journal and conference publications and 30 patent filings in his name.

VP & Head of Data Solutions at Instaclustr

Anil is the VP & Head of Data Solutions at Instaclustr by NetApp, which provides a managed platform for open source data-layer and developer workflow technologies. Anil has 20+ years of experience in data and analytics roles. Joining Instaclustr in 2019, he works with organizations to drive successful data-centric digital transformations via the right cultural, operational, architectural, and technological roadmaps. Prior to Instaclustr, he held data & analytics leadership roles at Dell EMC, Accenture, and Visa, among others. Anil lives and works in the Bay Area.

Sales Director - Startup and Mid Market, US at Bright Data

Asaf is a people person with great analytical skills and the ability to learn new material quickly. He is independent, responsible, presentable, and he sees the big picture. He has a strong work ethic, and he truly invests in what he is working on. He has great expressive abilities in English and Hebrew, both written and oral. He loves working in an international environment in a role that involves numbers, analytics, and close human relations.

Instructor at Caltech

Ash Pahwa, Ph.D., is an educator, author, entrepreneur, and technology visionary with three decades of industry and academic experience. He specializes in the Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Search Engine Optimization. Dr. Pahwa earned his doctorate in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He is listed in Who's Who in the Frontiers of Science and Technology. He is also a Google Certified Analytics Consultant. In Industry, Dr. Pahwa has worked for General Electric, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Xerox Corporation, and Oracle. He founded CD-Gen, Inc. and DV Studio Technologies, LLC., which introduced successful products for CD-Recording (CDR) and MPEG encoding. His book, CD-Recordable Bible was published in English, Japanese, and German. In Academia, Dr. Pahwa teaches courses at California Institute of Technology (Pasadena) and the University of California system. Since 2008, he taught many courses at UC Irvine, UCLA, and UC San Diego.

CEO & Founder at Eightfold.ai

With 6000+ research citations, 50+ patents, 35+ peer reviewed research publications, and the outstanding PhD thesis award from UIUC for his PhD thesis in Machine Learning, Ashutosh is one of the world's experts in machine-learning. He founded Eightfold.ai in 2016 with the goal to find the right career for everyone in the world. Now, they help companies like Hulu, Twilio, Postmates, and Capital One retain top performers, upskill & reskill their workforce, recruit top talent efficiently, and reach diversity goals. Eightfold.ai is valued at $2.1B after their recent series E funding (TechCrunch) and received an honorable mention in Fast Co's 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards. Prior to Eightfold.ai, Ashu founded BloomReach.

Senior Data Scientist at Medallia

Avinash Gundapaneni is a creative & experienced Data Scientist with over 8 years of academic and industry experience in the Data Science and Analytics domain. Avi is the Lead Data Professional at Medallia where he conceptualizes, designs & builds SaaS products that help businesses understand their markets and customers better and make data-driven business decisions. Before working for Medallia he was with Sense360, a startup that Medallia acquired in 2020. At Sense360 he was one of the principal contributors to build robust and business driven data products that enables companies to examine and organize their data with the goal of better serving their customers and consumers. Throughout his career, he worked in different Data Science roles across different domains Pharmaceutical, Automotive, and Retail industries. Driven by the lifelong passion for solving difficult applied problems in Math/Stats he obtained an MS degree in Business Analytics from the University of Cincinnati.

Director of Business Development at impak Finance

After obtaining his Bachelor’s degree in Law (LL. B.) at the Université de Lorraine (France), Axel gained valuable experience in impact measurement working for large organizations such as BMCE Bank (1st African banking group). With his breadth of knowledge on sustainability, he then moved abroad to Canada, where he worked as Sustainable Development & Circular Economy Advisor for the City of Montreal, the city’s first circular economy initiative. Adding to his law background, he also obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration (B. A. A) with a specialization in Management and Sustainable Development from HEC Montréal. He has now been working at impak since 2018 where he started as Head of Partnerships before moving into his current role as Director of Business Development (Europe).

CEO and co-founder at Transcend.io

Ben Brook is the CEO and co-founder of Transcend, a data privacy technology company headquartered in San Francisco. Backed by Accel and Index Ventures, Transcend makes it simple for companies to give users control over their data, and has built engineering solutions to chart the path forward for modern data rights. Solving the technical challenges of managing personal data, especially in light of increased global regulation and consumer interest, is Brook's biggest passion. Prior to co-founding Transcend, Brook studied computer science, astrophysics, and neuroscience at Harvard University. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Brook is a passionate and award-winning filmmaker. In his spare time, he works on open source projects, studies guitar & piano, and plays rugby.

VP, Business and Product Development at ImpakFinance

Boris is VP, Business and Product Development and heads the data and scoring team at impak, the leading independent impact rating agency. In his prior role with Pollinate Energy, a social start-up working to improve the lives of India’s urban poor by giving them access to affordable products, Boris worked as City Co-founder in Kolkata, India. Before that, he worked in various positions in Commercial Banking at ING Bank in Belgium. Boris holds a Masters in Business Engineering and Finance from the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (Belgium).  

CEO at Ascender AI LLC

Braddock Gaskill has twenty-five years of professional experience in the fields of computational linguistics, computer vision, and machine learning. He has publications in ballistics simulation, machine translation, AI similarity metrics, and space launch industry news. Braddock has patents in cryptographic authentication, collaboration user interfaces, optical character recognition, and conversational AI dialog systems. He attended Johns Hopkins University.

Lead Software Engineer at Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

As a Lead Software Engineer at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Brandon is responsible for everything from software design to data analytics to infrastructure. He has an educational background in business analytics and finance. It was when he began working at Northrop Grumman, that he decided to officially turn to computer science full time. Approximately 8 years, 12 programming languages, 18 hackathons, and over +10000 GitHub commits later he has done software development in the following industries: real estate, aerospace, financial software, internet marketing, and currently film/entertainment. One of his true passions, in addition to working with technology, is teaching, inspiring, and leading others who are interested in pursuing careers in tech-related fields.

Senior Data Scientist at California Policy Lab at UCLA

Brian Blackwell is Senior Data Scientist at CPL. He specializes in CPL's homelessness project portfolio, leading projects ranging from predictive analytics implementations to causal inference and program evaluation. In his spare time, he likes to read classical political economy and play the piano.

Data Science Mentor At Zindi

Bunmi Akinremi is a Data Scientist and Android developer. She is passionate about bringing more women into tech and she's currently a Zindi mentor where she helps amazing ladies build their Data Science career. Still a computer science undergraduate in OAU, she has been in the tech field in the field for 3 years. She is currently a community projects lead for a data science community. She's also a team lead for a Women In Data Science Community in her school. She loves writing tech related articles and has published a number of write ups on Data Science/ML/AL. She was recently featured in a book titled The Techie Chic by Ibukun Ogunniake.

Managing Principal at Enfuse.io

Cahlen Humphreys is an academically trained Mathematician who holds degrees from Boise State University and Florida Atlantic University. He entered the Big Data software sphere by coincidence. He has held the role of Data Engineering, Big Data Engineering, Solutions Architect, and Big Data Software Engineer. Currently Cahlen operates a boutique professional services company called Enfuse.io, Inc which has 20+ team members across a number of different industries.

Developer Advocate at Ververica

Caito is a Software-Engineer-turned-Developer-Advocate. She represents the US region for Ververica, creators of Apache Flink (a stream processing engine). Her engineering background is in stream processing and data analytics/observability. Outside of tech, she loves running, dance, woodworking, and terrible puns.

CEO & Founder of Mind Katalyst

Carnellia Ajasin is a highly sought-after product executive, business advisor, investor, author, CEO and founder of Mind Katalyst, an innovation technology venture studio. From digital to physical, Mind Katalyst specializes in applying human-centered design principles to help clients define, design, develop and fund products that achieve business objectives, relevance, meaning and competitive advantage. Carnellia and her team help ambitious organizations, nonprofits and entrepreneurs stay relevant, understand digital trends, emerging technology and create growth through the development of meaningful and purposeful software and hardware products and services that improve lives. Prior to founding Mind Katalyst, Carnellia held senior-level roles at such companies as Oracle, Ernst & Young and Cap Gemini – leading enterprise-wide technology implementations throughout North America and Europe.

CEO at Champions Round

Dedicated early stage startup entrepreneur with a passion for building great products and developing successful cultures. Alum of: Envoy Technologies, Related Companies, NYU. 

VP, Product at Kaskada

Dr. Charna Parkey is Vice President of Product at Kaskada, where she co-created the first commercially available feature engine with time travel. She has over 15 years’ experience in enterprise data science and adaptive algorithms in the defense and startup tech sectors and has worked with dozens of Fortune 500 companies in her work as a data scientist. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida

Epidemiologist at Los Angeles County Department of Public Health

Chelsea Foo is an epidemiologist for the Acute Communicable Disease Control Program at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Chelsea has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from UCLA and a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan, with a Graduate Certificate in Health Informatics. Throughout the pandemic, she has been an active member of the Los Angeles County COVID-19 response. Her current work focuses on spatiotemporal analyses and other novel approaches for early detection of disease outbreaks.

Principal at Hybrid Data LLC

Chijioke (CJ) Ejimuda is a Principal at hybriData, a data driven engineering technology consulting company creating niche products for rail, energy, and power infrastructure markets. Prior to starting hybriData, he worked as a full stack developer, data engineer, and data scientist with several startups. Also, he worked as a reservoir engineer with ExxonMobil helping support the execution of various energy projects. Chijioke earned his bachelor's degree in electrical electronics engineering from FUTO and master's degree in petroleum engineering from USC. He's an expiring marathon runner and always seizes the opportunity to play some pickup tennis and football a.k.a soccer 🙂

Chief Communications Officer at Influential

Chief Communications Officer of Influential, the world’s leading influencer marketing company with over $100M in campaigns, $2B in measurable sales, Trusted by over 60% of the Fortune 500, official partner of IBM Watson.

Principal Developer Advocate, AI and Machine Learning at AWS

Chris Fregly is a Principal Engineer,  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."

Analytics Manager at Activision | Blizzard

By day, Christian provides critical business insights for Activision by building optimized interactive dashboards, business processes, and data pipelines. By night, he hopes to inspire the next generation of Business Intelligence and Data Analysts through LinkedIn, Social Audio, and YouTube and podcast coming soon!

Data Product Manager at HopSkipDrive

Cindy Lin has years of experience in the fields of Data and Product. In their current role as Data Product Manager at HopSkipDrive, they focus on improving employee data driven decision making and access to information for customers. Throughout their career, they has made complex information and insights accessible to colleagues and customers, yielding positive results across numerous industries including gaming, social media, research, and manufacturing by applying the same set of data principles and product management tenets.

CEO at Claudia T Miller, LLC

Claudia is a Latina Career Coach and she helps Career-Driven Professionals get the jobs they want at salaries they love-- even up to $50k in salary increases. She's been featured in Forbes, MSNBC, and Business Insider named her one of the 'Top 23 Most Innovative Career Coaches of 2020". When she's not helping clients, she can be found Latin dancing on a beach somewhere with her husband.

CTO at SnapLogic

Craig Stewart is the CTO at SnapLogic, where he is responsible for leading the company's product strategy and launches, roadmap, and evangelism. Craig is an experienced manager of technical teams with many years of experience guiding the evolution of data and application integration technologies. Over his career, he has been a significant contributor to the development of several fast-growing technology companies, including Oracle, Cognos, Powersoft, Sybase, iMediation, and Sunopsis.

Managing Partner at 4C Decision

Cupid Chan is a seasoned professional who is well-established in the industry and is a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor in University of Maryland. His journey started out as one of the key players in building a world-class BI platform. Cupid has been a consultant for years providing solutions to various Fortune 500 companies as well as the Public Sector. He was the Board of Directors and Technical Steering Committee in Linux Foundation ODPi. His current role as Chairperson of BI & AI Committee in LF AI & Data enables him to lead initiatives intersecting AI and BI. He was the Architecture and Logical Data Model Group Chairperson accountable for managing engineering disciplines, providing overall technical direction and supporting for all products in Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO), which is a not-for-profit responsible for developing standards for exchanging information and conducting business for the U.S. mortgage finance industry.

Elevation Engineering at DataStax

A five time published author, Daniel Farrell has been designing and delivering world-wide critical business applications using relational, object-relational, and post-relational, including OLTP, OLAP, predictive and graph analytics.

Senior Data Scientist at Whip Media/ Visiting Researcher at USC Annenberg

Danny is an industry- and academia- recognized expert in entertainment media and data science. His work has been featured by the DEG: Digital Entertainment Group and published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, International Journal on Media Management, and the International Journal of Communication. Drawing from experience at Paramount, Wharton, USC Cinema, and Annenberg Penn, he is currently helping transform streaming content licensing as Senior Data Scientist at Whip Media and continuing innovative media preference research as Visiting Researcher at the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

Director of Engineering at Enfuse.io

Dave is an experienced software craftsman based in Boise, Idaho. He is passionate about software culture and emerging technologies, and is well-versed in a variety of modern processes, tools, and programming languages.

MySQL Community Manager at Oracle

Dave Stokes is the author of MySQL & JSON - A Practical Programming Guide now in its second edition!

Sr Specialist Solutions Architect - AI/ML at Databricks

Debu is a Senior Solutions Architect at Databricks focused on implementing/optimizing machine learning and deep learning capable pipelines at scale. Previously he has co-founded a real-time identity graph management and analytics company called Throtle onboarding. Before that, he founded a nonprofit org in India that aimed at increasing education access to remote parts of India using virtual classrooms. In his current role, he interacts and aligns strategically with the technical and business leadership of Databricks Enterprise customers. He is leveraging his strong technical background, love for public speaking, and effective communication with customers to understand their business and technical strategy and challenges. He regularly engages in architectural design and whiteboarding sessions with customers as they see him as a trusted advisor. As a Senior Solutions Architect at Lifion by ADP, Senior Engineer at V12 group, and Bank of America, he has spearheaded multiple projects involving streaming and machine learning capable pipeline creation and optimization. his passion for cloud computing, machine learning, and distributed systems began while working on his Master's research thesis on Machine Translation at Johns Hopkins University.

Data Platform MVP at Malta Data Platform UG

Dennes is a DBA and Data Platform MVP living in Malta who loves SQL Server and software development and has more than 20 years of experience. He moved to Malta after more than 10 years leading devSQL PASS Chapter in Rio de Janeiro and now is a member of the leadership team of MMDPUG PASS Chapter in Malta organizing meetings, events, and webcasts about SQL Server. He is an MCT, MCSE in Data Platforms and BI, with more titles in software development. He can be found working for Betsson Group and speaking in SQL Saturdays around Europe

Head of Special Projects at Wikimedia Foundation

Denny Vrandečić is the founder of Wikidata. Today, he works is the Head of Special Projects at the Wikimedia Foundation, where he leads the Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions project. He is the co-inventor of Semantic MediaWiki and was an Ontologist for the Knowledge Graph at Google. He is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. He received his PhD at the KIT on his research in Semantic Web technologies.

Chair JCC at OATH

Donald Malloy is a Security Consultant, Founder of the Symposium on Securing the IoT and Chairman of OATH, The Initiative for Open Authentication. He helps organizations manage their security programs with their IoT security, authentication and identity management solutions. He is currently the Director of Business Development for DualAuth, a security company with multi factor authentication. OATH is an industry alliance that has developed the MFA market and shifted it from proprietary systems to an open source standard based architecture promoting ubiquitous strong authentication used by most companies today. Mr. Malloy has more than 25 year's experience in the Security, Semiconductor and Payment industry. Don was responsible for developing the online authentication product line while at NagraID Security (Idemia) and prior to that he was Business Development and Marketing Manager for Secure Smart Card ICs for both NXP and Infineon Technologies. Don originally comes from Boston where he was educated and has M.S. level degrees in Organic Chemistry and an M.B.A. in Marketing. He resides in Southern California and in his spare time he enjoys hiking, camping and traveling around this beautiful world.

Author, Lecturer, & Fulbright Specialist at U.S. Department of State

Dr. Rankin is a Fulbright Specialist for the U.S. Department of State who has lectured at institutions like the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge and delivered over 200 keynote/plenary speeches and other presentations. She has two doctorates (a Ph.D. and L.H.D), has written 12 books and 165 papers and articles, and writes an ongoing blog column for Psychology Today. She regularly trains federal agents on data communication and formerly served as Chief Education & Research Officer of a data systems company. Dr. Rankin's many media appearances include NBC News, NPR, Newsweek, HuffPost, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, and congressional testimonies to inform legislation. She is an active member of Mensa and has been honored multiple times by the U.S. White House (e.g., the American flag was once flown over The White House / Capitol Building in her honor). 

Founder at Histofi

Dr. Zakir is the founder of Histofi, Inc., a Delaware corporation with headquarter in Los Angeles. Histofi captures and processes data and distributes insights to cancer care providers and researchers in real-time. It also links pathologists and oncologists from developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to their counterparts in the USA. Dr. Zakir started his medical career in 1995 with telemedicine, progressively pioneered digital health evolutionary phases with digital health, mobile health, and now, artificial intelligence in medicine. In 2001, he established the international telemedicine and telepathology systems between Bangladesh and Nebraska Medicine. He designed and launched the world's first mobile health application, HealthLine, by licensed physicians and managed services for 12 million users; the HealthLine program received the GSM Association's Global Mobile Award in 2007. He played a pivotal role in securing a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and established a "Masters of Science degree program in Health Informatics" in Asia (2010), and served as a faculty member. Dr. Zakir successfully piloted a health micro-insurance scheme for industrial workers in developing countries through a generous grant from the Government of Switzerland.

Geographic Information Officer at County of Los Angeles

As GIO for LA County Dr. Steinberg guides the geospatial strategy across all departments. He is passionate about the use of geospatial methods to solve real-world problems. He is actively involved in geospatial organizations and serves as a member of the Board of Directors for URISA International, the GIS Professional Association. Dr. Steinberg also serves on National workgroups with the United State Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Steve in his “free time” is also a professor in the GIScience Program at CSU Long Beach.

Founder & CEO at Healthcare Strategic Consultants, LLC

Dr. Eboni Dotson is a consummate professional with nearly two decades of progressively responsible experience in the healthcare sector. In 2018, Dr. Dotson founded Healthcare Strategic Consultants, LLC, a healthcare management firm. As Managing Partner of the firm, Dr. Dotson is dedicated to transforming and innovating the delivery of healthcare services by offering principal solutions and driving results in organizational change and regulatory compliance with diverse healthcare practitioners and organizations.

Data Platform Engineer at Stitchfix

Elijah has always enjoyed working at the intersection of math and engineering. More recently, he has focused his career on building tools to make data scientists more productive. At Two Sigma, he was building infrastructure to help quantitative researchers efficiently turn ideas into production trading models. At Stitch Fix he is a founding member of the Model Lifecycle team — a team that focuses on streamlining the experience for data scientists to create and ship machine learning models. In his spare time, he enjoys geeking out about fractals, looking at antique maps, and playing jazz piano.

Head of Partnerships and Business Development at Amazon/ IMDB

I lead partnerships and BD for IMDb scaling advertising growth within the Amazon entertainment ecosystem. Prior to Amazon I was at Warner Bros /WarnerMedia driving synergy efforts for ATT Inc.

Director of Product Management at Google

Evren Eryurek, PhD is the leader of Data Analytics and Data Management portfolio of Google Cloud covering Streaming Analytics, Dataflow, Beam, Messaging (Pub/Sub & Confluent Kafka), Data Governance, Data Catalog & Discovery and Data Marketplace as the Director of Product Management. He joined Google Cloud as the Technical Director in the CTO Office of Google Cloud leading Google Cloud and its efforts towards Industrial Enterprise Solutions. Prior to joining Google, he was the SVP & Software Chief Technology Officer for GE Healthcare. A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Evren holds a master’s and doctorate degree in Nuclear Engineering. Evren holds over 60 US patents and is author of the book titled "Data Governance: The Definitive Guide"

STSM, Chief Architect, IBM Z Cryptographic Portfolio at IBM

Eysha Shirrine Powers is the Chief Architect of the IBM Z Cryptographic Portfolio. Most people know Eysha as a HUGE crypto nerd. She has a background in software engineering, and has spent the last 16 years designing and developing cryptography & security solutions to protect sensitive data. Eysha travels throughout the US and abroad to provide expertise and guidance to IBM clients.

Tech Lead - Data Science & Machine Learning at Fast.co

Francisco Javier Arceo is the Tech Lead for Data and Machine Learning at Fast. He has spent over ten years applying his experience in data science, engineering, and technology to launch and scale digital products at Goldman Sachs, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, AIG, and Ipsos. He holds graduate degrees in Data Science & Machine Learning and Economics & Statistics from Columbia University (New York City) and Clemson University, respectively.

Data Scientist at DISQO

Gasia Atashian is a Data Scientist and Machine Learning Engineer, innovative math modeler, and coder, with over four years of industry experience in data science, engineering, and technology. Gasia is a Data Scientist at DISQO where she uses her expertise and knowledge to develop Fraud Detection systems, customize Attribution Models, and contribute to data-driven business decisions. Gasia is a significant contributor to DISQO’s Data Science team, has a technical background in computer science, and holds a graduate degree in Data Science.

Data & ML Engineer at Amazon Web Services

Ginni is a Data and Machine learning at Amazon Web Services. She has been in analytics track for 5 years now. She has a Masters in Computer Science degree from NYU.

DataOps Dev Engineer at California State University - Chancellor's Office

Gupta is a DataOps Dev Engineer at California State University, Office of the Chancellor

CEO at Spokeo

Harrison is Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Spokeo. He started Spokeo with his college roommates Mike Daly (CTO) and Eric Liang (CIO) in 2006 in his parents basement in 2006. and serves as Spokeo's Chief Executive Officer. Harrison guides Spokeo's product vision to build an experienced team that helps the company realize its mission of making the world around us more transparent. Under his leadership, He Harrison has helped build and scale Spokeo ’s user base from zero to serving tens of millions of users. He is passionate about building products that help customers get their jobs done. Harrison earned a B.A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Economics and a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.

CEO at Protonautoml

Harsh Gupta has more than 6 years of experience building and directing AI initiatives across diverse industries. He has served in technical roles such as Data Scientist at WWF and client-facing roles such as Consultant for Johns Hopkins, Grofers, OSUgiving. He is currently CEO of protonAutoML, an autoML software provider.

Data & Knowledge Engineer at Semantic Web Company

Heather Hedden is a Data and Knowledge Engineer in the professional services team of Semantic Web Company, vendor of PoolParty software for taxonomy, ontology, and knowledge graph management. She trains clients in getting started in building taxonomies and ontology models. Previously she worked as a taxonomy consultant (Hedden Information Management) and as a taxonomist in various organizations. Through Hedden Information Management she continues to teach an online course in taxonomy creation, and she has given numerous conference and corporate taxonomy workshops. Heather is author of the book The Accidental Taxonomist.

VP, Client Development at DISQO

Howard Ming, Vice President of Client Development at DISQO, has spent his career helping researchers understand the why behind consumer's opinions and behaviors. Leveraging his extensive knowledge of sampling and insights, he helps turn research questions into actionable data. His expertise in survey methodologies is paired with a deep understanding of tech-driven innovations in the areas of behavioral data, automation, and user verification.

Development Engineer at UC Irvine

Ian Maxon is a developer on Couchbase Analytics, and a staff member on the AsterixDB project at UC Irvine. He is also a member of the Apache AsterixDB Project Management Committee. Ian holds a MS in Computer Science from UC Irvine.

VP, Enterprise Sales & Licensing at XSOC CORP

XSOC Corp (XC) was founded on the belief that in order to truly PROTECT digital assets and IP from unauthorized use, sale, or ransom, premium-grade cybersecurity tools would need to be developed. Our products enable hardware & software OEM's as well as Enterprise IT/InfoSec Professionals to embed, deploy, or license our technologies to dramatically upgrade their data security while reducing their cyber risk and associated data breach costs.

Principal Product Manager at Couchbase

Idris is a Principal Product Manager, Analytics at Couchbase with 20+ years experience in design, development and execution of software products at both Fortune 500s and startups leading teams in digital transformation, cloud and analytics. Idris holds an MS in Technology Management and certifications in product management.

VP, Global CIO Industry Leader at UiPath

Jagjit Dhaliwal has recently joined as VP, Global CIO – IT Industry Practice Leader at UiPath. In this role, he is responsible for assisting client CIOs in their automation strategy. He brings in 20+ years of technology experience transforming public entities and Fortune 500 companies in multiple industry domains across various geographies. In his last role, Jagjit was a Deputy Chief Information Officer at Los Angeles County and acted as a Strategic Advisor to Public Safety and Health Departments. He collaborated with Department CIOs to foster digital transformation through IT strategy planning, organization digital & data maturity assessment, portfolio rationalization, governance, technology modernization, and adoption of emerging technologies like AI, RPA, IoT & Blockchain. He led countywide Data Strategy as well as developed a regional strategy for closing the Digital Divide gaps in the Los Angeles region. Before this, he worked with Cognizant Technology Solutions & Tata Consulting Services bringing in years of consulting, delivery, and sales experience. Jagjit has an executive MBA degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics from Punjab University, India.

Senior Principle Software Engineer at Red Hat

Jakub is one of the maintainers of the Strimzi project which is part of CNCF and focuses on running Apache Kafka on Kubernetes. He is also a contributor to Apache Kafka itself and many other open source projects. He currently works for Red Hat as Senior Principal Software Engineer. Before joining Red Hat he worked as a developer and architect in the financial industry. He is member of the Project Management Committee of the Apache Qpid project and member of AMQP Technical Committee at OASIS.

CEO & Co-Founder at PwrdBy

Jared is passionate about designing and conducting user research and telling data driven stories. He started PwrdBy six years ago after leaving Deloitte Consulting, where he was a senior consultant in their Social Impact Strategy practice. Jared is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and has built numerous successful mobile, web, and data products in partnership with clients, including the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals fundraising application, In Flight, which helps them manage 170 hospitals across the U.S. Jared is a contributing author to NonProfitPRO, LATech4Good, and Technology Association of Grantmakers. He is a speaker on artificial intelligence, big data, and data science. He is a TEDx speaker on innovation communities. Jared graduated Summa Cum Laude with Distinct Honors from Miami University with a double major in Accounting and Environmental Science. Jared sits on the board for the Youth Business Alliance and LATech4Good. Jared is a council member for the AI for Good Foundation.

Deputy Mayor at City of Los Angeles

Jeanne Holm is the Deputy Mayor for Budget and Innovation of the City of Los Angeles, addressing technology, equity, digital inclusion, and fiscal accountability through municipal broadband, participatory budgeting, and digital transformation of government services. She was the evangelist for open data for the U.S. Government under President Obama, the lead for Africa open data for the World Bank, and the Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA. She serves as an advisor for the U.N. on data and astronautics, is a Trustee of Claremont Graduate University, is on the Global Leadership Board for Time’s Up, and teaches at UCLA.

CTO and Lead Data Scientist/Engineer at Dfuse Technologies

Jeffrey Bertman is a "data everything" specialist with major success stories in small to large Fortune 100/1000 and government organizations, including Warner Brothers, Verizon, Comcast, Geico, Airlines, CIGNA, and Federal Government (DoD, DoJ, etc). He serves as CTO and lead data scientist/engineer for Dfuse Technologies, a world class consultancy with a data boutique and nationwide footprints in private and public sectors, e.g., Apple, Wells Fargo, New York & Company, Google, Amgen, CVS Health, Deloitte, and numerous government agencies. From strategy through operations and mentoring, Mr. Bertman leverages leading edge technologies to deliver high yield, enduring success stories that actualize real world improvement in market share, revenue, profit, quality, security, efficiencies, effectiveness, and more. Mr. Bertman is a popular speaker on a wide range of technical and management topics. Business disciplines include accounting/financials, marketing, sales, social media, entertainment, digital transformation, legal, telecom, health care/science, e-collaboration, manufacturing, distribution, and inventory optimization.

CDPH COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force Reporting and Analytics at California Department of Public Health

Experienced Research Analyst with a demonstrated history of working in the government administration industry. Skilled in Analytical Skills, Statistical Data Analysis, Government, Public Speaking, and Economic Development. Strong research professional with a Economics M.S. focused in Natural Resource Economics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She is with the California Department of Public Health, running the Reporting and Analytics for the CDPH COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force. Before that she was the Research Data Supervisor as the Data Quality and Analysis Unit Chief. Responsible for improving the data quality of California's vital statistics data, the birth, death, and fetal death data. Lead team of analysts to systematically improve data quality and track trends.

CEO at I3 Systems

Jerry Power is the CEO of I3 Systems and a founder of the I3 Consortium. I3 Systems Inc, develops and supports real-time data networks that span organizational and geographical constraints. The I3 concept, originally developed at the University of Southern California in partnership with regional companies, government agencies, took several years to evolve from an academic concept to become a commercial system that manages the confluence of many data streams. I3 recognizes the importance and the personalized nature of privacy, trust, and incentives as key enablers of a sustainable, managed, and networked IOT infrastructure in order to support a collaborative IOT environments where data transcend organization boundaries.

Founding partner at Diamond and Co-Founder of Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Joe is a serial entrepreneur who has been fostering the growth of the Los Angeles tech ecosystem since 2008. His experience includes co-founder at Diamond, a digital agency that builds accessible experiences, and Co-Founder and Chair of the Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) Foundation. In 2019 Joe and the Diamond team launched their first State of Accessibility Report. Joe has more than 20 years of development experience in high-profile projects spanning Digital Media, Search Engines, Performance Management; for Internet backbone providers, Investment Banks, Telcos, Big Pharma and Big Media. When Joe is not solving technology challenges for major organizations, you can find him on stage influencing every developer and corporation to build their digital products with inclusive design in mind.

Distinguished Engineer at Optum

John Lavoie is a Distinguished Engineer at Optum focusing on how to use data at scale and leading architecture for the Optum Care Data Platform. He also has experience as an architect and technical lead for Optum's Analytics Common Capability, a platform for executing patient analytics in massively parallel environments. Prior to Optum, John was a software engineer at Axcelis Technologies. He received his BS in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Deputy Director, Communications and Insights at California Office of Digital Innovation

JP Petrucione joined the Newsom Administration in 2019 as the Governor's Director of Digital Media, and transitioned to ODI in October 2019. At ODI, JP created the Insights Team, applying his background in politics and digital media to developing new ways to engage Californians and bring their needs and concerns into policy and service design. Today, the Insights Team is experimenting with and proving out innovative approaches to human-centered research, demonstrating that government can gather and apply sentiment data, at scale, in real time, and cost effectively, in ways that are replicable by any state or other jurisdiction. Prior to joining the Newsom Administration, JP served as Global Digital Director for Public Policy at Airbnb, and many years before that, he served as then-Mayor Newsom’s Deputy Communications Director.

VP of Data Science at ICX Media, Inc.

Jyotika Singh is the Director of Data Science at ICX Media, where she mentors her team as they research on NLP, feature engineering, machine learning, data analytics, distributed computing, social media data, and audiences data using Python. Her efforts in driving data science at ICX along with introduction of new methods and processes have led to patented technology, and strongly contributed to reduced operating costs, securing of new clients and achieving high double digit revenue growth in the past year with positive EBITDA. Outside her work, she contributes to open-source and has been a speaker at multiple conferences across the globe to share her findings and work with the Data Science community. She is passionate about encouraging women in STEM and continues mentorship efforts to support the topic.

Data Evangelist, Space Enthusiast, & NASA Datanaut at InfoAdvisors

Karen is a senior project manager and architect with an extensive background in development processes and information management. She specializes in taking practical approaches to systems development. She has 20+ years of public speaking (keynotes, speeches, and demonstrations). She wants attendees to have fun, gain insights and take away inspiration for working with new technologies and methods. She's known for her slightly irreverent and practical approach to IT training and speaking. She wants you to be part of #TEAMDATA.

Senior Consultant at CGI

Kathryn Wolterman is a Senior Consultant at CGI with a focus on systems integration, automation, data equity, and change management. Previously, she has developed American products for launch in international markets such as China, Norway, Japan, and Jordan. She is passionate about responsible tech and supporting equity in STEM.

Product Strategist at Enjoy The Air

Results-focused software engineer turned product enthusiast - Keerthi loves starting from the ground up and build game-changing products that are at the cusp of technology and business. Over 14 years of experience with defining and launching successful products. Passionate about sustainability, reducing carbon footprint, and focusing on driving connections at the intersection of science, business, technology, and sustainability by unfolding data stories one at a time.

VP Marketing & Communications at Bright Data

Keren is an international marketing executive exhibiting innovative, creative and dynamic ability to achieve best results. She has over 15 years of experience in integrated marketing, product and content marketing as well as content development and storytelling, PR and award-winning journalism.

Consultant at Avanade

Korey Edwards is a software engineer in Avanade Inc’s Intelligent Automation practice. He is a certified Robotic Process Automation (RPA) developer and has led several solution implementations to improve data integrity, reduce processing time and alleviate workflow bottlenecks.

Chief Data Scientist, Executive Director - InnovationX at U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

It’s an exciting time to be running data innovations at the intersection of public health crises, government response, and the best of private industry coming together to solve America’s most pressing public health issues. Dr. Honey’s InnovationX team resides in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH). The InnovationX team tackles complex challenges by harnessing the power of open data, open science, open source, citizen science, crowdsourcing, prizes challenges, and innovative public- private partnerships for public health. Dr. Honey has worked in the White House across three administrations, advising the White House National Security Council and the HHS Chief Information Officer (CIO) on big-data sharing, governance, analysis, and predictive analytics with AI/ML. In collaboration with the CIO, she established the Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO) and co-founded the Data Governance Board to implement the OPEN Government Data Act, which became law with the Foundations for Evidence Based Policymaking Act. She transformed the interagency Open Data community of practice with Data.gov from the Open Data Policy guidance. In June 2018, Dr. Honey transitioned to HHS and the Immediate Office of the Secretary. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Dr. Honey worked with the HHS Chief Information Officer to establish the HHS Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO). As HHS’s Chief Data Scientist and Executive Director of InnovationX, she has led the $25M KidneyX Innovation Accelerator, founded the HHS Lyme Innovation initiative, established LymeX, a $25M public-partnership with the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, and most recently launched PandemicX. Dr. Honey earned her Ph.D. at Stanford University in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in the Environment and Resources, School of Earth Sciences, while simultaneously earning a Ph.D. minor in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. She holds an M.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a B.A. in Human Biology with Honors from Stanford University. In her spare time, Kristen enjoys yoga, hiking, jogging, sailing, SCUBA diving, skiing, traveling, and holistic health work for Lyme disease, while also having the special ability to hypnotize lobsters to stand on their heads. She is a proud Mainer!

Head of Strategy & Business Operations at Hulu

Laura is the head of Hulu's Strategy and BizOps team, where she helps draft the future of streaming based on data analytics and market trends. She has a background in management consulting and earlier in her career founded and ran a media production company developing interactive stories and tangible interfaces for the arts. She received her MBA from MIT Sloan and media production degree from the University of Hildesheim in Germany.

Director, Machine Learning Architecture at Numenta

Dr. Lawrence Spracklen is an experienced leader, with over two decades of experience in developing and delivering cutting-edge solutions. At Numenta Lawrence leads machine learning architecture team focused on the intersection of hardware architecture and software performance and scalability. Prior to joining Numenta, Lawrence led research and development teams at several other AI startups; RSquared, SupportLogic, Alpine Data and Ayasdi. Before this, Lawrence spent over a decade working at Sun Microsystems, Nvidia and VMware. Lawrence holds a Ph.D. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Aberdeen, a B.Sc. in Computational Physics from the University of York and has been issued over 65 US patents.

DBA at Localiza

Leo graduated with a degree in management processes. He has more than 11 years of experience in IT. He worked as a Support Analyst, Systems Analyst with a focus on ITSM, IT Change Management and as a Change Manager. He made the biggest GMUD of his career, the processes guy and became a DBA. He has certifications in MCSE: Data Management and Analytics and MCSA: SQL Server 2016 Database Administration.

Head of Data Analytics and Data Science at HyreCar

Linda Liu has extensive experience helping a business build analytics and data science foundations as well as roadmaps that empower data-driven decisions and improve user experience across the organization. She is also a big advocate for cultivating a data centric culture that enables teams across the business to better utilize data / analysis and bring added value to the day to day work.

Research and Data Analyst at Advancement Project CA

Maria T. Khan is a proud Muslim-American immigrant with a hunger for telling stories with data and uplifting the voices of underserved communities. She’s currently working on the research and data analysis team at Advancement Project CA, a racial equity and justice advocacy nonprofit in Los Angeles. Maria holds an M.S. in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University. Learn more about her work at mariatkhan.weebly.com

Managing Director at Infiom, LLC

Mariana is the founder of Infiom, a global consensus blockchain economy for creation of Web3 ventures using DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and Metaverse principles. Prior to Infiom, she was the Managing Director of BitAngels, the first crypto angel network formed in 2013 that invested in the launch of Ethereum. She is an Advisor to SuperWorld, Open Therapeutics, Anode (Pkt), Monax, System9, EarnTV, SafeGram, BuddyDAO, Kirobo, and CryptoArt Agency. Mariana was EVP Business Development for NTN Buzztime, Inc. (AMEX:NTN) and Head of Business Development, Content Aggregation and Programming for MediaZone, a broadband video company launched and owned by NASPERS Internet (largest investor in Tencent). Mariana also founded and directed the Digital Media Incubator at KPMG LLP.  Portfolio companies raised angel investments from Michael Jackson, Beny Alagem, Al Copeland, IdeaLab, David Gefen, Brian Singer, Bob Daly, Jeff Pollack of Handprint Entertainment and John Gee, Executive Director of NASA Ames Research Incubator, and VC funding from Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Intel, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Panasonic, and Chase Capital Partners. Mariana served on the New Media Board and serves on the International Committee of the Producers Guild of America and is a member of the Television Academy.   Mariana served on the Board of the Tim Draper's Zone Ventures Club and on the Mayor Riordan's Digital Coast Roundtable.

Quantum Evangelist at Quantinuum

Dr. Mark Jackson is the Senior Quantum Evangelist at Quantinuum. He received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Columbia University. He then spent 10 years researching superstring theory and cosmology, co-authoring almost 40 technical articles. To promote the public understanding of science, he founded the science crowdfunding platform Fiat Physica and non-profit Science Partnership Fund. He is Adjunct Faculty at Singularity University and a Director of Astronomers Without Borders.

DataOps Dev Engineer at California State University - Chancellor's Office

Mary has 17+ years of development experience at Chancellor's Office, California State University, working across multiple departments in developing custom apps for information record management, Peoplesoft systems, Oracle BI, Database and server administration and forms development. Currently working in AWS cloud-based development using tools such as SPARK, EMR, Step functions, CI/CD, PyTests, Code Refactoring, Code Commit and Code Build etc. to transform the data sources to build curated datasets.

Augmented Insights Senior Manager at Accenture

Max serves as the Accenture Tableau Lead for NA West Market Unit. He spent his 10 years at Accenture focusing on Business Intelligence, Analytics, and anything Data. He built his expertise through several Tableau, Qlik and Watson deployments across multiple industries, including Product, Media and Pharma companies. Currently Max is leading our Dashboarding team for the COVID-19 Contact Tracing program in the State of California.

Chief Operating Officer at Rideback Entertainment

Michael is the Chief Operating Officer of Rideback and works with the team across TV, film, operations and development initiatives. His background includes building businesses and investing in the media, consumer and technology verticals.

CTO and Co-Founder at Transcend.io

Mike Farrell is the CTO and co-founder of Transcend, a data privacy technology company headquartered in San Francisco. Backed by Accel and Index Ventures, Transcend makes it simple for companies to give users control over their data, and has built engineering solutions to chart the path forward for modern data rights. Before co-founding Transcend, Mike simultaneously received an MS in Computer Science and his BA in Computer Science and Statistics at Harvard University. During that time, Mike worked as a research intern in the George Church Lab, automating the neural drug development FISSEQ end-to-end from robotics to image analysis. Additionally, Mike spent two summers as a risk-modeler for Apollo Global Management and was a five-time teaching fellow in the CS and mathematics department at Harvard.

Developer Advocate at Iterative.ai

Milecia is a senior software engineer, international tech speaker, and mad scientist that works with hardware and software. She will try to make anything with JavaScript first. In her free time she enjoys learning random things, like how to ride a unicycle, and playing with her dog.

Managing Director, Applied Intelligence - Products West at Accenture

Monark is a Managing Director with Accenture’s Applied Intelligence strategy based out of San Francisco. He leads the responsible AI practice for the US West and brings over 16 years of experience in the applied intelligence arena. Monark has worked with various clients to help define their AI strategy, value targeting opportunities, hybrid architectures, and emerging technologies use cases. He is extremely passionate about the use of technology for social good. Honored as a San Francisco Business Times 40 Under 40 Winner in 2021. Monark is a thought leader in the emerging technologies & digital arena and a public speaker who has presented various point of views on leading practices.

Managing Attorney at Salehpour Legal Consulting

Morvareed Z. Salehpour is Managing Attorney of Salehpour Legal Consulting, a law firm specializing in assisting entrepreneurs, startups, and businesses to create and negotiate the strongest contracts and tech transactions for scaling and protecting their startups and businesses. Morvareed also counsels them on issues involved with their services offerings, product launches, and product feature launches such as intellectual property licensing and protection, open source issues, data and privacy rights, and use of emerging technology. Morvareed regularly represents SaaS, AI, analytics, software, and other technology startups/businesses in structuring master services agreements (MSAs), SAAS agreements, consultant agreements, licensing agreements, terms of services/terms and conditions, subscription agreements, reseller/referral agreements, joint venture/partnership agreements, beta agreements, data processing agreements (under GDPR and CCPA), subcontractor agreements, statement of works (SOWs), NDAs and confidentiality agreements, vendor agreements, SOC audit agreements, HIPAA business associate agreements, privacy policies, digital currency agreements, and government contracts and subcontracts, among many other agreements. Morvareed is a graduate of UCLA and UCLA School of Law, where she also served as a Managing Editor for the UCLA Law Review. She previously practiced at BakerHostetler, a national firm where her work included being a member of the legal team seeking to recover the principal lost in the Madoff Ponzi scheme. Morvareed works with clients in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and beyond. Morvareed is also President of the Santa Monica Bar Association, Board Member and Career Chair for the UCLA Alumni Westside Bruins Network, Board Member and Co-Event Chair of UCLA Law Women LEAD, and a regular speaker and writer on tech and business law issues.

Managing Director in Strategy group at Accenture

Neil is a managing director in Accenture Strategy.  His specialty is Customer Strategy and Transformation. This is about creating compelling customer solutions, experiences and cultures that drive profitable growth and operational efficiency. Disciplines that I typically use include operating model design, customer experience strategy, digital strategy, product/service portfolio design, applied analytics, digital marketing and technology enablement. He has directed numerous Customer Transformation efforts for global brands in B2B and B2C environments and have worked across several industries such as Utilities, Wireless, Insurance and Retail.

Senior Product Marketing Manager at Denodo

Nishtha Chouhan heads Denodo's NA customer marketing efforts. She is also responsible for sales enablement and different aspects of product marketing efforts. Nishtha brings in a wide range of industry knowledge in data management and analytics space with global leadership experience in engineering and marketing roles. Nishtha holds an MBA from University of California, Irvine, and is a strong advocate of youth mentoring and development programs.

Solution Architect at Plus N Consulting

Nuri Halperin is a software architect, speaker, and author. He helps companies develop scalable systems, websites, and business applications. He's been turning projects into success stories for a variety clients for over 2 decades. Nuri is an author of several Pluralsight.com courses. He's also a Microsoft MVP alum, a MongoDB Master, and recipient of MongoDB's William Zola Award for Community Excellence. He enjoys tinkering with Arduinos, 3D printing, and mentoring youth robotics teams.

Managing Director, North America at Bright Data

Omri is a tech-savvy business leader with extended experience working in the network, software and security industries. He is a deep familiarization with multiple global markets, serving in several senior leadership technology-based roles. He has vast experience in business negotiation, forming strategic profitable partnerships with large-scale enterprises as well as working with start-ups and SMEs accelerating their growth and entering new markets.

Open Source Relations Manager at Vertica

Paige Roberts (@RobertsPaige) has worked as an engineer, trainer, support technician, technical writer, marketer, product manager, and a consultant in the last 24 years. She has built data engineering pipelines and architectures, documented and tested open source analytics implementations, spun up Hadoop clusters, picked the brains of stars in data analytics, worked with different industries, and questioned a lot of assumptions. She's worked for companies like Data Junction, Pervasive, Bloor Group, Hortonworks, Syncsort, and Vertica. Now, she promotes understanding of Vertica, distributed data processing, open source, high scale data engineering, and how the analytics revolution is changing the world.

Senior Manager, Data Science at Tatari

Param is Senior Data Science Manager at Tatari. She has a PhD in chemical physics from Harvard. She held an academic position at UC Berkeley before beginning work as a data scientist at a small start-up (now publicly traded) internet company. She moved on to become Director of Scientific Modeling at a leading market research company where she developed and implemented models to predict consumer behavior. An early employee at Tatari, she has worked at the company for 3.5 years wearing many hats across the data science and media buying teams.

CEO at Percona

Peter Zaitsev is CEO and co-founder of Percona. As one of the foremost experts on Open Source strategy and databases optimization, Peter leveraged both his technical vision and entrepreneurial skills to grow Percona from a two-person shop to one of the most respected open source companies in the business. Peter is a co-author of High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, and Replication, one of the most popular books on MySQL performance. Peter frequently speaks as an expert lecturer at Open Source, Databases and related conferences.

Principal Data Scientist at Teradata

Phil Bangayan is a Principal Data Scientist at Teradata, where he has worked since 2018. In this role, his industry focus is on the Media & Entertainment, Travel and Hospitality industries, drawing upon his fifteen years of experience in theme parks and resorts. Having worked in data science, finance and marketing roles, Phil's functional passion is applying analytics to solve business problems, thereby growing revenue and reducing cost. Phil has previously presented at Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the Wharton 2021 Annual Analytics Conference, and for the UCLA Alumni Association. Prior to working at Teradata, Phil held leadership roles at The Walt Disney Company and NBCUniversal. He holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and an MS in Electrical Engineering from UCLA.

CEO at Nakunj Inc

Pramod Kunju ("Data Guru") is the Founder and CEO of Nakunj Inc, a niche professional services firm specializing in Data Analytics and AI. Mr. Kunju serves on the Board of National Diversity Coalition, an advocacy organization representing "Voice of the Voiceless". Mr. Kunju is in a unique position to provide thought leadership on potential risks of AI adoption.

West Public Health and Southern California Consulting Lead at Accenture

Praneet leads Accenture's Southern California Public Sector Strategy and Consulting practice and Public Health for the West. He has 15+ years of experience in the Public Sector, Health and Banking sector. He has over 10 years of project management, project planning, risk planning and mitigation, scope control and management experience, resource management on large strategy and consulting projects.

CEO at Enginelitix

Preet Singh is CEO at Enginelitix, which provides AI solutions to revenue-facing problems for Fortune 50 companies and startups. Previous experience includes head of AI at multiple startups and Microsoft AI. He studied Computer Science & Economics at the University of Rochester, and Algorithmic Economics and Artificial Intelligence at Northwestern University. His research publications include algorithm design and artificial intelligence.

Senior Analyst at Econ One Research Inc.

Priscila Baddouh is a Senior Analyst at Econ One Research, Inc. She specializes in economic and statistical analysis. She has practiced in the fields of health care, antitrust, educational program evaluation, educational research focused on K-12 teachers experiences, and research on the impact of Head Start programs on early childhood. Priscila's experience includes the analysis of large and complex datasets, data management, data visualization and creation of complex statistical models, statistical sampling, forecasting models, and qualitative data collection instruments such as interviews and focus groups.

Data Equity Program Manager at LA Tech4Good

Rachel Whaley is an advocate for technology as a tool for positive social impact. As the technology lead for LA Tech4Good, she leads workshops to enable individuals and organizations to develop ethical and equitable data practices. Across her experience with nonprofits, higher ed, and public and private sectors, she believes data can be a force for good when handled responsibly. She holds degrees in public policy and computer science from the University of Chicago.

CEO & Co-Founder at Stargazr

Rafi is the CEO & Co-Founder of Stargazr, SaaS for CFOs. He has a PhD in Management Control. He is a former Financial Analyst at Lufthansa Technik and Beiersdorf.

Product Designer at Headspace

Raleigh is a curious and data-driven Product Designer currently working on the AI/ML team at Headspace. She is focused on bringing personalized experiences and recommendations to the near 100 million meditation users that Headspace serves. Through her previous of consulting work, Raleigh collaborated with teams to launch over a dozen innovative new products. While she has experience working in a number of industries, Raleigh specializes in designing experiences for artificial intelligence and mental health. In her off-time you might find Raleigh canoeing in the Venice Canals or riding a bike on the beach. She is also a chess enthusiast, traveler, writer, and all around adventure seeker.

Founder & President at Koru Strategies

Rebecca is driven to improve the business of government 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. She launched Koru Strategies, a government technology business development advisory firm in 2020.

Director, Developer Relations at MariaDB

Rob Hedgpeth has been slinging code since the early 2000’s. Like many others, he started his journey by building pretty horrendous looking websites. Fortunately, for the world, he has since evolved and has branched out to a variety of projects across web, desktop, mobile, and IoT. Now as a developer evangelist for MariaDB, Rob gets to combine his love for technology with his mission to fuel developers’ curiosity and passion. In his free time, Rob just tries to keep up with his wife, infant son, and two crazy dogs!

Developer Advocate at Cyral

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 and follow him on twitter at @rob_rich.

Big Data Developer at Captify

Roksolana works as a Big Data Engineer at Captify. She is a speaker at technical conferences and meetups, one of the Women Who Code Kyiv leads and mentors. She is passionate about Big Data, Scala, and Kubernetes and she always loves to learn something new. Her hobbies include building technical topics around fairytales and discovering new cities.        

Founder and CEO at GoodData

Roman Stanek is a passionate entrepreneur and industry expert with over 20 years of experience. He founded GoodData on a mission to disrupt the business intelligence space and help companies monetize big data. As CEO, Roman has become a leading voice in the analytics industry, changing how companies use data insights to move forward. Roman is actively involved in GoodData’s client relationships, understanding the challenges they face and how data can positively impact clients’ future success. Prior to GoodData, Roman served as Founder and CEO of two successfully sold startups, NetBeans and Systinet. NetBeans was sold to Sun Microsystems in 1999, and Systinet was similarly sold to Mercury Interactive in 2006. Throughout his career, Roman’s work has helped transform the high-tech landscape. As he looks to the future, Roman’s focus is centered on the evolution of the data value chain and how it will shape the future of analytics.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Instrumental

Rustem Feyzkhanov is a machine learning engineer at Instrumental, where he works 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 the main contributor to the open-source repository for serverless packages https://github.com/ryfeus/lambda-packs.

Engineering Leader at Kaskada

Ryan Michael leads engineering at Kaskada, where he is pioneering a new way to think about feature engineering that enables flexible, data-dependent time travel without the possibility of temporal leakage. Before Kaskada, he served as a principal software engineer at ReturnPath and he was leading the development of streaming data infrastructure and their data science platform. Ryan enjoys bringing a design mindset to challenging problems and collaborating with cross-functional teams to bring innovative ideas to life.

Managing Director (Strategy and Consulting/Applied Intelligence) at Accenture

Rapid digital acceleration means technology is now, without question, the cornerstone of global leadership. With more than 12 years’ experience driving large-scale digital transformations, I’m passionate about helping organizations use data/AI/ML to innovate, create new products and services, and optimize business processes. As a Managing Director in Accenture’s Applied Intelligence (Strategy & Consulting) practice, my focus is on achieving the extraordinary – finding new ways to overcome the most complex challenges by harnessing the power of data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Leading Accenture’s Applied Intelligence Resources West business, I now bring deep technical skills, business experience and industry insight to help our clients in this industry to achieve their strategic goals, master change, and shape a better future in a fast-changing environment. Previously, my work in Chile and Argentina inspired me to develop execution strategies through which technology can fuel new growth. As well as being an experienced electronics and telecommunications engineer, I have an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and a Masters in Engineering Management from Duke University. Business Skills : Retail Banking, Utilities, Value Targeting, Customer Analytics, Marketing Analytics, Data AI/ML Strategy, Business Strategy, Account Management (Mining and Hunting).

CEO & Founder at It's Prodigy

Sano was born in 1981 in Damascus, Syria and when he was 6 years old he moved with his family to Italy where he followed his educational and professional career. He started his career in IT and then he built his experience in Management. During his professional career he received different nominations and awards.

Data Engineer at Quansight Labs

Sayantika is a Data Engineer at Twilio and a student of Business Analytics at the Indian School of Business. According to her, data and insights are like crafting a poem, simple yet powerful.

Staff Data Scientist at Ripple

Shae Wang is a Staff Data Scientist at Ripple. She leads Ripple’s efforts around blockchain data and developer experience. Before joining the Blockchain industry, Shae was a Data Scientist at Uber for a few years and worked on a wide range of problems from OCR modeling and churn modeling to causal inference. Prior to her role at Uber, Shae used Neural Net to predict stock market movements for a startup and also ran her own self-storage startup on her college campus. Shae earned her Masters in Computer Science with a focus in Machine Learning and Bachelor's degree in Statistics from Northwestern University.

Asset and Data Strategy Manager at SoCalGas

Shaena is the Data and Asset Strategy Manager at SoCalGas, leading the enterprise asset management and operational data governance programs. Shaena is an experienced program manager with 16 years of experience at SoCalGas focused in using data to drive operational decisions and investments, renewable energy transition, reducing climate change impact, and supporting customers with energy efficiency and distributed energy solutions. Shaena has a BS in Chemical Engineering from UC Riverside and an MBA from California State University-Fullerton - College of Business and Economics.

CTO and Co-founder at Syntasa

Shawn Zargham is a successful entrepreneur and technology leader with deep expertise in analytics, SaaS, and cloud computing. He has a proven track record of devising winning technology strategies, and expertise in architecting, patenting, developing, and deploying large-scale solutions for high performance near real-time event processing, ML/AI, analytics, and optimization. Shawn is skilled in building strong partnerships with key customers in pre-sales, deployment, and support phases with a history in evangelizing transformational changes and establishing thought leadership. His experience includes leading large teams of software development, product management, quality assurance, and customer service organizations, as well as leading technology and product due diligence activities with investors and acquisition partners. He is currently the CTO and Co-founder at Syntasa. Previously, he cofounded Telarix, the leading global provider of telecom software products and SaaS solutions that was acquired by Vista Equity Partners.

CEO at MountainTop Data

Sky Cassidy is the CEO of MountainTop Data and host of the If You Market podcast. He grew up in rural Northern California and moved to Los Angeles in 2002 where he spent a decade in the sales and marketing trenches and dabbled in the Southern California startup scene. In 2016 he took over as CEO of one of those startups, MountainTop Data a provider of list and data services for B2B marketing. He is a problem solver and tinkerer, and enjoys breaking things down, cleaning them out and building them back up. He loves to talk about business, science, and philosophy and believes that 2+2 is somewhere between 3 and 5. He is also an amateur color commentator for dart, ping pong, and Rock Paper Scissors tournaments.

Sr. Scrum Master at Sensei Ag

Sonia Macias is a Sr. Scrum Master passionate servant leader delivering technology development projects faster to the customer. Sonia facilitated agile scrum transformation in the entertainment industry with high performing teams. Sonia is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Product Owner (CPO), Project Management Professional (PMP) with a MBA, and is currently in the Master of Science Program in Project Management at USC and has a B.S. in Business Administration from USC.

Vice President Public Sector at Qualtrics

Spencer is an experienced leader with a successful track record building effective teams in a fast pace SAAS environment. I care about the people I work with and strive to help them progress.

Sr. BI Architect at Kaiser Permanente

Sreekanth is an experienced professional with product development, business process analysis, engineering, software evaluation and implementation skills in the Healthcare, Media, Product, Retail, Pharma, Investment Banking and Consumer-related industries. He has expertise knowledge in building architecture frameworks that supports processes, strategy, and IT assets. He has strong program management skills using industry leading reusable-framework and methodologies.

Research Scientist II - Global Talent Management at Amazon

Dr. Sreyoshi Bhaduri is an Engineering Educator and People Researcher. She currently manages Global People Research and Analytics at McGraw Hill, where she leads research leveraging employee data to generate data-driven insights for decisions impacting organizational Culture and Talent. Her research interests include assessing the impact and effectiveness of inclusion initiatives as well as employing innovative, ethical and inclusive mixed-methods research approaches using AI to uncover insights about the 21st century workforce. Sreyoshi is passionate about improving belonging among women in STEM and Engineering, and was recently elected as Senator at the Society of Women Engineers - a not for profit organization with over 42,000 global members and the world's largest advocate and catalyst for change for women in engineering and technology. Learn more about her work and get in touch at www.ThatStatsGirl.com.

CEO at Folio Photonics

Steve is a seasoned technology executive, entrepreneur, and student of disruptive technologies. Steve previously had a 14-year career at Intel, where he led an array of strategic projects including the Microsoft partnership (Wintel), the global expansion of the Intel Developer Program, and the formation of the Visual Computing Group. He is well-versed in identifying trends, understanding ecosystems, and creating strategic plans that position technologies into industry control points, generating market presence, share, and value. Steve is driven by his passion for working with cutting edge and disruptive technologies.

Database Analyst at Localiza

Sulamita Dantas has a degree in Computer Science from Unibh. She is experienced as Database Administrator SQL Server, TOTVS Analyst and BI Analyst. She participates in several communities: SQL Server, SQL BH, Random Hacks, Meetups and others. Speaker and volunteer at various events of Communities throughout Brazil. She is a MVP Data Platform (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional), Leader of the Local Group SQL BH, Co-Organizer of Random Hacks Group, MTAC NGO. She is passionate about cycling.

Senior Manager / Big Data Architect at Edgecast

Sunita has been in big data space for 4 - 5 years and have had a chance to architect and implement multiple projects . The technologies she has gained expertise on are spark/scala, python, AWS Stack, Kafka and Hadoop stack.

Graduate Assistant at Virginia Tech

Tahsin Mahmud Chowdhury is an Engineering Education Researcher who focuses on engineers at work in the 21st century. He is passionate about enhancing professional competencies for engineering workforce development in academia and beyond. He is trained in Industrial and Systems Engineering and has a combined 7 years experience spanning both academia as well as lean manufacturing at Fortune 500 companies. Currently, he is a doctoral candidate at Virginia Tech's College of Engineering. Tahsin’s long term goal is to bridge the engineering competency gap between industry demand and academic fulfillment. A global engineer and researcher, Tahsin is an advocate and ally for better inclusion in STEM and beyond.

Chief Enterprise Architect at Los Angeles County

Terence is a technology leader with broad experience in governance, architecture, security, design and delivery. He has extensive experience in delivery of complex enterprise solutions using various technologies in on-site/offshore employing a very strong process encompassing traditional iterative or Agile processes in a highly object-centric environment. Highly effective communication to all levels of the corporation and client using artifacts appropriate to the audience. Specialties: Architecture, enterprise delivery, technology direction, security risk and posture, roadmap and governance, data architecture and analytics; offshore-onsite project definition, management and delivery; integration- and modernization-focused projects.

Manager, Enterprise Analytics Solutions at San Diego Gas & Electric, a Sempra utility

Tom is the Manager of Data & Analytics Services for San Diego Gas & Electric, a Sempra utility. His centralized IT team is responsible for implementing and supporting a broad range of analytics and business intelligence solutions and technologies, partnering with business clients in Customer Services, T&D Engineering and Operations, and Finance/Administrative Services. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (Systems Engineering) and University of San Diego (MBA), Tom proudly served as a Navy carrier jet pilot and instructor for almost 10 years and successfully led key training, maintenance and operations functions. He subsequently joined Science Applications International Corporation, where he spearheaded the growth of a small business process optimization team into a multi-million dollar consulting practice, spanning multiple industries and information technology. Leveraging his consulting and outsourcing experience internally, he helped to guide several organizational transformations, and served as the Director of Change Management. Tom joined SDG&E in 2012 and has held several management positions, including IT Strategy Manager, prior to assuming leadership of and centralizing several IT analytics teams in 2018. He is currently leading a major evolution of analytics within his team and the company, shifting all IT teams to agile methodology, consolidating and modernizing technology with shift to cloud, and driving self-service and data governance tools/practices. Tom loves the great weather and outdoor life in San Diego, particularly biking, golf and water activities, and with their two children now in college, he and his wife are looking forward to traveling a bit more in the future.

Head of Partnerships and Business Development at Neon One

Tim Sarrantonio is a team member at Neon One and has more than 10 years of experience working for and volunteering with nonprofits.Tim has raised over $3 million for various causes, engaged and enhanced databases of all sizes, procured multiple successful grants, and formulated engaging communications and fundraising campaigns for several nonprofits. He has presented at international conferences and is a TEDx speaker on technology and philanthropy and was named NonprofitPRO's 2020 Technology Professional of the Year. He volunteers heavily in his home of Niskayuna, NY.

Developer Advocate at StreamNative

Tim Spann is a Developer Advocate at StreamNative where he works with Apache NiFi, MiniFi, Kafka, Apache Flink, Apache MXNet, TensorFlow, Apache Spark, big data, the IoT, machine learning, and deep learning. Tim has over a decade of experience with the IoT, big data, distributed computing, streaming technologies, and Java programming. Previously, he was a senior solutions architect at AirisData and a senior field engineer at Pivotal. He blogs for DZone, where he is the Big Data Zone leader, and runs a popular meetup in Princeton on big data, the IoT, deep learning, streaming, NiFi, the blockchain, and Spark. Tim is a frequent speaker at conferences such as IoT Fusion, Strata, ApacheCon, Data Works Summit Berlin, DataWorks Summit Sydney, and Oracle Code NYC. He holds a BS and MS in computer science.

Chief Data Officer at Riverside County

During the past decade Tom has worked to close the digital divide throughout one of the nations largest counties by working collaboratively those inside and outside of government to bring broadband services, digital literacy, devices, data transparency and decision-making tools to customers, constituents, and nonprofit organizations. Tom is a veteran, husband, father, community member, and servant leader.

Data Scientist at Tatari

Vasily is a Data Scientist with Tatari. He has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering focused on improving early detection of complications in epilepsy and prior to Tatari he has worked in a financial services company Prism Valuation (acquired by IHS Markit), pricing and analysing derivative market

CEO at IMO

Experienced CEO / Producer / PR Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the entertainment industry. Skilled Digital Strategist, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Marketing Management, Event Management, and Media Relations. Strong arts and design professional with a None focused studies in Communication, Journalism, and Related Programs from Centennial HS and Benson Polytechnic HS.

Sr. Director of Data Science at Shift

Vera has a strong background in Mathematics. She teaches at UCLA introduction to Data Science. Currently she is the sr. director of data science at Shift. Previously she worked at the Honest company, Headspace and FabFitFun. She developed recommendation engines, predictive LTV, survival models, used AWS eco stack, adapted genetic programming in data science for e-commerce. She is a curios and data driven individual.

Senior Manager, Data Science Enablement & Delivery Lead at Accenture

As a Data Science executive with 12+ years of experience spearheading large-scale data analytics initiatives, building professional teams, and steering previously obstacle-ridden projects through to timely completion, Vish builds on a strong leadership background, data visualization and transformation expertise, and multimillion-dollar project execution capabilities to render data-driven decision support to industry front-running organizations. Throughout his career at Accenture, he has utilized his data-driven technical acumen to develop best-fit analytics platforms. For instance, he helped Puget Sound Energy reduce the number of customer calls by developing a “platform of insight” to track and analyze customers availing the self-service option. Similarly, he built data conversion for 5 million LA County DPSS customers for the country’s first-ever and biggest social services platform to streamline enrollment onto multiple welfare programs.

Architect at ZipRecruiter

Vitaly is tech leader, designing and implementing software, systems and cloud architecture. He has 7 years of big data experience with Apache Spark and Hadoop and 20+ years of software development experience.

Technical Consultant at eg Innovations

With over 10 years of Performance Analysis experience in both Windows and Unix worlds, Wendy works with customers to fix their issues within enterprise infrastructures.

DataOps Dev Engineer at California State University - Chancellor's Office

Wen is a DataOps Dev Engineer at California State University, Office of the Chancellor

Sr. Data Visualization Architect at Amazon Web Services

Ying has 11+ Years in Data Analytics. She is part of the AWS Professional Services – Data Analytics Practice. She helps customers to unlock the power of data with AWS QuickSight.

Computer Systems Analyst and Data Scientist at LearningFuze

Zia has been advising and helping customers develop solutions for their business challenges using system analysis, data analytics, machine learning, natural language processing, and deep learning. He has worked with companies to implement recommender systems and NLP projects including chatbots. He has implemented solutions based on python machine learning libraries i.e. Sklearn, pandas, keras and tensor flow.

Head of Engineering, ThinkAcademy International at TAL Education Group

Zitao Liu is Head of Engineering, ThinkAcademy International at TAL Education Group (NYSE:TAL), one of the largest leading education and technology enterprises in China. His research is in the area of machine learning, and includes contributions in the areas of artificial intelligence in education, multimodal knowledge representation and user modeling. He has published his research in 70+ highly ranked conference proceedings, such as NeurIPS, AAAI, WWW, AIED, etc. and serves as the executive committee of the International AI in Education Society and top tier AI conference/workshop organizers/program committees. He has won numerous international AI/ML competitions including NeurIPS 2020 education challenge. He is a recipient of ACM Distinguished Speaker and Beijing Nova Program 2020. Before joining TAL, Zitao was a senior research scientist at Pinterest and received his Ph.D degree in Computer Science from University of Pittsburgh.