Bio

• Independent consultant; instructor, systems architect, dev+lead • Commissioned to create and deliver custom sessions for a FAANG: Sequence Modeling, Graph Neural Nets, Timeseries Modeling/Forecasting, Generative Image Models (GAN/Diffusion) • Led a training on distributed compute at ODSC West 2022 featuring Spark, Ray, and Dask • O'Reilly Technical Reviewer: ''Scaling Python with Ray'' and several other titles (see below) • Clients include Apple, Meta, Netflix, Intel, Visa, Qualcomm, PayPal, Autodesk, Adobe, Westfield, Samsung, Cisco, Tufts Health Plan, Anthem, AXA • Co-organizer PyData PDX (>1000 members) • O'Reilly instructor: Spark, Ray, Dask, Deep Learning, MLOps • Invited presenter, repeat engagements, Fortune 100 firm: ... ''Complexity and Using 2020 as a Classroom: Learning from Crises to Improve Data Analyses, Make Better Decisions, Build Robust Projects, and Avoid Business Disasters'' ... ''Don't Mess Up Your Data-Driven Decisions: Common Statistical Tricks and Paradoxes'' • Inaugural ODSC Data Engineering Summit (2023) presenter: Thrive in the Data Tooling Tornado: Lead, Hire, and Execute Better by Escaping Older Industrial Antipatterns • PyConUS 2021 presenter: Dask-SQL: Empowering Pythonistas for Scalable End-to-End Data Engineering and Data Science • AnacondaCon 2020 presenter: Migrating Enterprise Analytics and ML Workflows from Spark to Dask: Why, How, and What to Watch Out For • Industry-first Apache Spark 3.0 course, created and delivered with O'Reilly • Data Science with Spark: Beyond the Basics - #2 top-rated out of 145 sessions at ODSC West Data Science Conference (2016); overflow crowd at ODSC West 2018, ODSC East 2019 • Featured instructor on Apache Spark for all Databricks Spark Live 2017 and 2018 worldwide events • Created and Delivered: Hands-On Intro to Deep Learning Theory/Practice with Keras and TensorFlow, taught at Spark+AI Summit San Francisco 2018 • Created deep learning and AI courseware licensed by Hortonworks (Cloudera) for worldwide delivery; #1 invited deep learning instructor for Berlin and San Jose DataWorks Summit events • BA Mathematics (Univ. of Chicago) and MA Greek and Latin Classics (Brown Univ.) • Experience in financial, mobile, travel, and media industries including large scale transactional and analytics (financial), user‐facing web, client, mobile, and distributed systems • Multiple roles at startups, successful exits Specialties: • Systems architecture and implementation • Org effectiveness: decisions, uncertainty, and complex systems • Training: Making complex topics accessible