The Tech Trek

Meet: Marick S. Sinay, Ph.D. is Vice President Head of Data Science and Analytics for Aspiration. Dr. Sinay has been in the broader financial services industry in various quantitative financial modeling and data science roles. He has experience working at large financial institutions, Bank of America and Western Asset Management, as well as at FinTech startups in the Los Angeles area. Dr. Sinay has successfully hired and led teams of data scientists, data analysts, and data engineers to drive business intelligence and advanced predictive analytics using machine learning to solve enterprise initiatives. He has a Ph.D. in Statistics and Applied Probability, Masters in Statistics, and a Masters in Economics from the University of California Santa Barbara. What you’ll learn:  Career advice - tips and advice for analyst and data scientists to grow Building data teams - do’s and don’ts to building a successful diverse team

Meet:  Ankur Goyal is the co-founder and CEO of Impira. previously built and scaled the engineering team at MemSQL as employee #2 and VP of Engineering. Ankur received his B.S. in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. He also holds several patents in database technology. What you’ll learn: Extracting more value out of documents Helping companies automate their paper processes to digital Getting an AI project into production and the related ROI Talking about a new feature that allows someone to extract information from any doc through the UI If you would like to reach out to Ankur about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via: https://twitter.com/ankrgyl?lang=en https://twitter.com/impirahq https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankrgyl/

Meet: Ash Berlin-Taylor is an active committer and member of the PMC for Apache Airflow and Director of Airflow Engineering team at astronomer.io. Before getting involved with Airflow he spent many years working in (web) infrastructure Kaxil Naik is currently the Committer, PMC Member, and Release Manager of Apache Airflow. He is also the Manager of Airflow Engineering team @ Astronomer. He did his Masters in Data Science & Analytics from Royal Holloway, University of London. What you’ll learn: Major features in the upcoming Airflow 2 release Upgrade path and compatibility What the team might be working on in future releases Learn more about the upcoming release: https://www.astronomer.io/blog/introducing-airflow-2-0 If you would like to reach out to Ash or Kaxil about anything they discussed on the podcast, please reach out to them via: https://twitter.com/kaxil https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaxil/ https://twitter.com/ashberlin

Meet:  Mike Bennett, Director of Enterprise Digital Farming at Climate Corp - Bayer Crop Science.  Responsible for Enterprise data governance and new business models. What you’ll learn: Mentoring vs coaching Leadership through influence Importance of messaging and tone If you would like to reach out to Mike about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsbennett https://twitter.com/MikeSBennett

Meet: Doug Puett is the Head of Data Science at UserTesting. UserTesting has the world’s greatest data source on how user research is done. Prior to joining UserTesting, Doug worked at a startup that was acquired by LinkedIn. He has an MS degree from Columbia and a Bachelor’s from Cornell. What you’ll learn: Getting the feedback cycle started early Having a deep interest in product Matrixed embedded data science teams If you have any questions for Doug, please feel free to reach out to him via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougpuett/

Meet:  Marian manages the Experiments and Optimization team at Zymergen. She spent the last ten years building data science solutions for problems in remote sensing, epidemic modeling, weather science, ag-tech, and now in synthetic biology. What you’ll learn: Taking advantage of innovation Relationships with science and product teams Advice if you want to get into data science If you would like to get in touch with Marian regarding anything discussed on this episode, please connect via: https://twitter.com/bayesiangirl

Meet: Xin Heng is currently the VP/Head of Data at Punchh. Before joining Punchh, he was the Head of Data Science at StubHub and a Data Science Manager at Uber. He has his Ph.D. in Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering from Caltech. What you’ll learn: Machine Learning Software Development - the differences between building ML software for B2B and B2C companies The Value of AI - predictivity vs interpretability Building an AI team - from the right leader and to core team members If you would like to connect with Xin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/xin-heng-8781302/

Meet:  Arkadiy is Head of Application & Infrastructure Security at Chime. He is passionate about all forms of digital harm reduction, ranging from technical, to policy & legal, to security management & leadership. What you’ll learn: Establishing a security champion and culture Developers make for great security engineers Learning lessons from launching his own product If you would like to reach out to Arkadiy about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via Twitter: https://twitter.com/arkadiyt

Meet:  Rick Medina is a security practitioner, OSINT junkie, button pusher, and checkbox un-checker What you’ll learn: Dealing with Covid’s impact on security within the retail space Security becoming more agile If you would like to get in touch with Rick regarding anything discussed on this episode, please connect via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardomedinajr/

Meet: Kyle is a CISO and VP, Security, Privacy, and Compliance. He has 18 years of establishing, growing, and leading Security and Software Engineering Teams that built security in consumer, enterprise, and SaaS software products. What you’ll learn: Bootstrapping a security program Security policy as code Starting point to move to shift security left If you have any questions for Kyle, please feel free to reach out to him via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylerandolph/