WiDS Puget Sound and Northeastern University Seattle present: An Evening of Mentorship

Hope you can join us!

At this mentoring event, 10-15 experienced data scientists will join us to answer questions in small groups about topics ranging from resume preparation and interview skills to career transitions to LLMs and MLOps. Groups of 4-6 attendees will have ten minutes to chat with a mentor before splitting up to join new conversations. Light refreshments will be provided.

WiDS Puget Sound is independently organized by Diversity in Data Science to be part of the mission to increase participation of women in data science and to feature outstanding women doing outstanding work.

Meet the Mentors

Catherine Nelson

Catherine Nelson is a freelance data scientist and writer. She is currently working on the forthcoming O’Reilly book "Software Engineering for Data Scientists”. Previously, she was a Principal Data Scientist at SAP Concur, where she delivered production machine learning applications and developed innovative new features. She is also co-author of the O'Reilly publication “Building Machine Learning Pipelines", and she is an organizer for Seattle PyLadies, supporting women who code in Python. In her previous career as a geophysicist she studied ancient volcanoes and explored for oil in Greenland. Catherine has a PhD in geophysics from Durham University and a Masters of Earth Sciences from Oxford University.

Kelly Stroh

Kelly joined the data science field after 6 years working in environmental science for nonprofits and government agencies. She studied Economics and Environmental Science at the University of Edinburgh, and learned to code at a Data Science bootcamp by Galvanize. After boot camp and a year of consulting, she joined the small, but mighty team of data scientists at Trupanion. Her dog greatly appreciates his insurance benefits. Since joining the tech industry, her passion for volunteering needed a new outlet, which led her to joining the Women in Data Science Puget Sound volunteer team.

Parvathy Gopinathan Nair

Parvathy Nair is a Data Scientist focusing on employee experience research on the People Analytics team at Zillow. She holds a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and two master’s degrees in Statistics and Business Analytics. She also volunteered for Data Circles and WiDS PS conferences for the last few years. She was excited to find a thriving data science community after her move to Seattle, particularly geared towards women. As a part of Data Circles and the WiDS PS conference, she is excited to give back to this community, and meet other women in the field of data science. When not at work, you will find her baking, reading, practicing yoga or spending time outdoors exploring with her family.

Parvathy prefers to mentor students and early career individuals.

Jennifer Evans

Jennifer Evans is a Co-op Advisor in the College of Engineering at Northeastern University. Before joining Northeastern Jennifer taught for 15 years at the University of Washington in contexts ranging from Business English for international students to Teacher Training undergraduate and graduate students, to preparing international executives pursuing the Global Executive MBA degree in the Foster School of Business. She's interested in Life/Career Design in the pursuit of balanced and fulfilled lives.

Dieta Hanson

Dieta completed her PhD in Evolutionary Biology at McGill University, where she got her start in analyzing large data sets, working with genetic data from quickly-evolving fish. She then went through the Insight Data Science program where she developed an app that helps write better Stack Overflow questions. After working for several years as a data scientist in the ad tech space (first at iSpot.tv then at Expedia), she now works at UW as a data scientist studying recreation on public lands.

Dieta prefers to mentor students and early career individuals.

Louisa Reilly

Louisa is an Advisory Consultant at Deloitte. Currently, she works on a data lake team where she leverages her data science skills to solve problems in cyber security. Her career interests and expertise include NLP, ML, MLOps, and data visualizations. However, she originally started her career as a chemist, possessing both a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Gonzaga University and a Master of Science in Chemistry from the University of Washington. During her Master's degree, she decided to pivot to data science after completing an NLP research project. In her free time, she enjoys lifting weights, gardening, playing DnD, and walking her dog.

Louisa prefers to mentor students and early career individuals.

Jennifer Hay

I am a resume writer and career coach specializing in career guidance for data professionals. My work experience in IT and analytics, along with my technical certifications gives me well-rounded knowledge and unique perspectives.

I help current and aspiring data professionals to make the most of their skills, talents, and interests to drive growth and meet career goals. I use a proven storytelling process to bring out the most compelling elements of past experience. More importantly, I help clients to develop natural and comfortable storytelling skills that are key to interview success.

I stay current in the data industry by writing data related exams for a certification program. The exams include data governance, data engineering, data science, data architecture, and data management, among many other subjects.

Ariana Mendible

Ariana Mendible is an Assistant Professor at Seattle University, teaching in the MS Data and engaging in research in quantitative justice.

Ariana prefers to mentor students and early career individuals.

Shweta Singhal

I’m a computer scientist with an interest in researching various deep learning and probabilistic aspects of research to effectively understand research direction in AI. Recently attended #socml17 and #wiml17. Interested in working on improving real life applications/research with passion for linear algebra, probability, statistics and numerical methods and not the least calculus.
With my 8 years of industry experience, I’ve been developing a new interest towards data and my heart towards mathematics brings me to machine and deep learning.

Robin Cosbey

Robin Cosbey is a Data Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with their M.S. in Computer Science from Western Washington University. Robin's research interests comprise machine learning evaluation and model explainability, including the identification of biases in data and their greater impacts. Robin also contributes their skills in data analysis, data visualization and natural language processing to a variety of projects across data modalities. Robin values opportunities for education and lends their time to various teaching and mentorship engagements.

Robin prefers to mentor students and early career individuals.

Pranjali Ajay Parse

Hey there! 👋 I’m a Data Scientist at Autodesk and a part-time procrastinator (just kidding) based out of the vibrant city of Seattle. I have pursued my Master's in Computer Science with a specialization in Data Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Bachelor's in Computer Engineering. More about myself, I enjoy digging into data, discovering what it can tell us. My passion for all things data extends beyond the code – it's about shaping meaningful insights that drive innovation. I also believe in the power of data storytelling – making complex information not just understandable but captivating. Previously, I served as a Career Developer, guiding and mentoring over 100+ students through their job hunting and interview preparation. I'm here to connect, share insights, and be your passive cheerleader on this journey. If that sounds like a good deal, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and book a free session with me on topmate. Check out my schedule and book a slot ASAP. Excited to CONNECT soon!! 😀

Natalie Miller

Natalie is a data scientist at Meta. She was trained as a psychologist and pivoted from academia into data science.

Natalie prefers to mentor students and early career individuals.

Apurvaa Subramaniam

Apurvaa currently works in ads data science at Spotify. Prior to this, she worked at Instacart and Amazon, in data science teams solving a variety of problems in areas such as supply chain, causal inference, experimentation and product analytics.