Data Con LA 2026: Rated 4.8 Out of 5
Data Con LA 2026 was held on August 22, 2026 at California State University, Long Beach. More than 620 people registered for our 14th annual event: 52 speakers and 39 sessions across seven tracks and six rooms, including the first edition of our five-minute lightning talks.
Attendees rated the sessions 4.8 out of 5. Eight in ten gave a five, and not one session came back below a four. That number belongs to the speakers.
We asked what it means to work in data now, at a moment when AI is rewriting the job under everyone's feet. The answers came from the room: a third of it students, the rest data scientists, engineers, managers, founders, consultants and faculty, from technology, healthcare, government, education, media, finance and consulting.
We are deeply grateful to our hosts at California State University, Long Beach for the venue and the welcome. Thank you to our sponsors and community partners for making the day possible, to our speakers for the substance behind that 4.8, to our volunteers who ran the rooms, the doors and the desk, and to everyone who came and made it a conference instead of a schedule.
See you in 2027. Session recordings will go up on our YouTube channel once they are edited, alongside recordings from past years. To hear when they land, sign up for updates!
Keynotes
Tracks
Panel Discussions
Speakers
Lucy Abboud
Data Aficionado, Founder and Principal at DataFi Consulting Services
Samah Afifi
CTO at Pitchtape
Arti Annaswamy
Director, Commercial Analytics & Business Insights at Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products
Anuj Bhalla
Founder & CEO at serviceMob, Inc.
Riya Bhatia
Recent Graduate at California State University, Long Beach
Jake Boggan
Founder at Forgetmenaut
Dusan Bosnjakovic
AI Science - Group Leader at Intuit (presenting independent work)
Wael Breich
Senior Data Analyst, Advanced Analytics at Pinnacle Group LLC
Randall Chalawsky
Management Consultant at Great Land Media Group
Rishov Chatterjee
Senior Applied AI Engineer at Curology
Guang Cheng
Professor at UCLA
Meena Chokkalingam
Principal Software Engineer at Zillow
William Collins-Broza
AI + XR Architect at Companion Intelligence
Joshua Cook
Data Scientist, Lecturer at Independent Consultant, Caltech CTME
Joseph Cox
Sr. Director Data Science and Engineering at Hadrian
Chris Sean Dabatos
Staff Developer Relations Engineer at Fly.io
Suman Debnath
Director, Developer Experience and Product at Crusoe
Ramakrishna Devulapalli
Co-Founder & Chief Architect at Larnya LLC
Pooja Doctor
Analytics Lead at Stellar Development Foundation
Christian Entezari
Founder and Managing Principal at Entezari Management Consulting
Monika Faulkner
Lead Data Analyst at Trustpilot
Neal Fultz
Data Science Consultant at NJNM, UCLA, Tatari
Jaime Gutierrez
Executive Director at Long Beach Workforce Innovation Network
Saritha Ivaturi
Founder & President at Code For Good
Michael Jenkins
Lead Software Engineer at Managed Kaos
Johnathan Joseph
Founder & CEO at Outfitted AI
Christina Karaba
Founder at yourcore corp
Richard Kelly
Lead Data Systems Analyst at UC Irvine Health
Xavier Kochhar
CEO, XKE Capital and Advisory Founder, The Video Genome Project (hulu)
Andrew Kou
Chief Technology Officer at OWL AI
Irina Kukuyeva, PhD
Fractional Chief Data Officer | AI Diligence at Kukuyeva Consulting
William Luong
Manager, Data & Analytics at Edwards Lifesciences
Devyn Miller
Big Data ML Engineer, TP-Link Systems Adjunct Professor, Chapman University
Justin Miller
Senior Software Engineer at LanceDB
Soroush Mirzaee
President, AI Club & Lead Machine Learning Engineer at California State University, Long Beach
Mike Mull
Owner/Engineer at Ekadanta Labs
Michael Neang
Business Analyst at Wintrust Specialty Finance
Brendan Ng
Senior Business Development Manager at Yoh
Yurii Nosov
Undergraduate Researcher at UCLA
Katya Ogai
Head of Analytics and BI at builder.io
Reza Rassool
Chair and CEO at Kwaai
Odessa Reyno
Chapter Director at Women In Big Data
Melody Rose
Cofounder at Legal Ark AI
Mahima Sachan
Former Software Engineer at Microsoft
Erin Shaw
Faculty, Computer Science and Data Science at Pasadena City College
Jyotika Singh
Principal Applied Scientist at Oracle
Heather Sit
Executive Director at AI LA
Therese Suarez
Senior Director, Analytics at Fox Corporation
Rae Wang
Associate Director, Optum Health Analytics at Optum
James Webb
Engineering Manager of Custom Apps and AI at Skechers
Also This Year
Lightning Talks. A fast-paced block of short talks, a lot of ideas in a little time. Our first edition of the format, and not our last.
Resume Skim. New for 2026: attendees sat down with one of our speakers for an honest five-minute read of their resume, the way someone who actually hires would.
Match & Mingle. Attendees who opted in at registration were paired with someone chosen for shared interests and background, and sent to find each other. A nudge toward connections that outlast the day.
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Sponsors
Community Partners
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