I'm the kind of person who loves wrestling with difficult questions, tackling messy human problems, and communicating complex ideas to others. These passions are what originally brought me into philosophy, education, and various non-profit community initiatives. These same passions are what's now propelled me into data science, where I work to translate data into insights and insights into tangible results.
Before becoming a data scientist, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, in their Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities, and in the Philosophy Department at the University of Toronto. I received my PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in 2015, specializing in ancient Greek philosophy and, in particular, Platonic metaphysics.
I currently work as a data scientist at Shopify, on the Core Optimize team, where I develop and design user-facing data products and analytics experiences, to give Shopify merchants the data they need to know how to make the right decisions about their business. You can read more about some of the work I do in my blog post, "A Data Scientist’s Guide To Measuring Product Success".
Though I'm trained broadly in data science, much of my specific interest has been in the area of natural language processing. (This probably has something to do with my undergraduate education in linguistics and lifelong fascination with human languages.) You can see some of the projects I've done and products I've built on the Portfolio page.
I am also deeply invested in AI ethics and algorithmic justice. My chief involvement in this space has been my role as the AI Ethics stream owner at Aggregate Intellect, where I ran a weekly discussion group on machine learning ethics. In addition, I have worked as an expert consultant on AI, data, and ethics for Ethical Intelligence. I have also developed original courses, workshops, and design frameworks to help AI practitioners learn how to think critically about the ethics of their work. You can learn more about all of this on the AI Ethics page.
I have been designing and delivering university courses since 2013. You can see syllabi and other materials from all my courses on the Teaching page. Tech folks may be particularly interested in my class on "Philosophy & Emerging Technologies". Others may be more interested in my class "'Can good people like bad music?' and other questions".
