We are excited to have an amazing team of speakers who are all passionate about data science. We look forward to sharing stories and experiences at WiDS Claremont.
Mitra Akhtari
Data Scientist
Mitra Akhtari
graduated from Harvard with an Economics PhD in May 2017. She is currently a data scientist at Airbnb. As an economist by training, her main area of expertise is applied micro-economics and causal inference. She combines quasi-experimental methods and observational data to estimate underlying causal relationships. In addition, she loves using data to tell stories: sometimes the most compelling points are made by simple and creative descriptive statistics and not fancy models. One example is a fantastic data project which was used in several federal court cases in 2017, The Immigrant Doctors Project.
Hilary Parker
Data Scientist
Hilary Parker
is a Data Scientist, previously of Stitch Fix, Etsy, and the 2020 Biden for President Campaign. She is passionate about the intersection of data science and product, from deeply understanding users to designing new experiences that depend on innovative data pipelines and client interactions. She also has a data science podcast — Not So Standard Deviations — co-hosted with Roger Peng since 2015.
Melanie Walsh
Assistant Professor
Melanie Walsh
is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the iSchool at the University of Washington, where she teaches data science, data ethics, and digital humanities. Before UW, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in Information Science at Cornell University, and she received her PhD in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. Trained as a humanist, she is committed to broadening the field of data science. Her research and teaching focus on how we can better understand culture through data and how we can strengthen data science through humanistic methods. She is the author of Introduction to Cultural Analytics and Python, a free online programming textbook for humanities and social science students.
Nicole Bauthier
VP, data strategy
Nicole Bauthier
is a Vice President of Research Data Strategies at Morgan Stanley. Nicole graduated from Pomona College in 2014 with a degree in Economics. Prior to Morgan Stanely, Nicole worked for BrainStation, YipitData, and NERA Economic Consulting.
Preet Khowaja
student, MS Data Science
Preet Khowaja
is pursuing an MS in Interdisciplinary Data Science at Duke University. Preet graduated from Pomona College in 2020 with a degree in Mathematics. Preet has had internships at Neighborhood Legal Services, Human Rights Watch, Legal Services NYC, and Gul Ahmed Textile Mills Limited.
