Volunteering for 2021!

We are already planning for WIDS Puget Sound Conference 2021! We had a lot of fun planning last year’s conference and we’d love to have you join us! Complete this form if you’d be interested in volunteering for 2021.

I'm Interested in Volunteering

Our Volunteers

Meet our 20 talented and devoted volunteers from 5 teams! They have spent hundreds of hours to bring this conference to you, so let’s recognize their brilliant work and commitment!

Central Planning Team - WiDS Ambassadors

Shivani Patel

Shivani is a Data Scientist at SAP Concur where she works on developing machine learning algorithms for the ExpenseIt feature. As of Fall 2019 she is also an adjunct lecturer at Northeastern University, Seattle campus, where she teaches probability and statistics for the Master's in Data Analytics Engineering Program. After completing a bachelor's degree in speech and hearing sciences, she pivoted and completed a post-bach degree in math and continued on to earn a master's in statistics. Shivani is passionate about equity in public education and supporting women in technology. She serves on the Renton Schools Foundation Board where she focuses on elementary STEM education and she is an Ambassador and Lead Organizer for the Women in Data Science Puget Sound Conference. In her spare time Shivani enjoys dancing with Jhimiki&Maatal (a Bharatanatyam dance team), curling up with a good book and watching Friends and Parks & Recreation on repeat.

Mengyuan Liu

WiDS Ambassador Mengyuan Liu is a Data Scientist at SAP Concur where she works on building machine learning engines to support one of the company’s core products: ExpenseIT, an app that allows automatic recognition of key fields in receipt images. Before joining Concur, Mengyuan obtained a PhD in bioengineering from the University of Washington, specializing in applying machine learning and computer vision technologies to medical imaging. In life, she is passionate about environmentalism, ethical fashion, animal welfare and enjoys traveling and good food.

Mahnaz Akbari

Data Circles Founder and WiDS Ambassador Mahnaz studied Math and Computer Science and has more than two decades of IT experience in different data-related roles. Over the past several years, she has shifted towards Machine Learning and Data Science. Mahnaz strongly believes in the potential of women and in creating a better world by acknowledging that. In 2017, she founded Seattle Women in Data Science (now Data Circles) with the goal of providing a safe platform for women in data science to thrive together and to promote this field among female techies. Mahnaz also believes this community will encourage a younger generation of female professionals to consider data science as a career. The overwhelmingly positive response to this group affirms the need that exists.

Branding Team

Jeny De Figueiredo

Jeny has an education in Business and Psychology, graduating magna cum laude from Lake Forest College with economic honors. A former Olympian in the sport of Rhythmic Gymnastics, she has drawn on the discipline she learned in her youth to develop her passion for problem-solving, project management, visual story-telling and all links between business and human behavior. With experience in marketing, operations, finance, accounting, estate planning, a variety of creative volunteer work managing teams, as well as running a small business and wearing all the hats that it entails, she is always eager to learn and grow. This eagerness motivated her to become a Microsoft Certified Professional in Data Science so that she can further enhance her problem-solving skills to provide data-informed insights for today’s business problems. Most recently she has enjoyed putting to use her marketing and event planning skills to build membership of Data Circles and plan the WiDS Puget Sound 2020 Conference. Connect with Jeny on LinkedIn.

Krystle Ziegler

Krystle is a recent ASU graduate who studied technology and entrepreneurship management. Her special interests include application of lean principles, android development and machine learning. Prior to pursuing a career at HopSkipDrive, Krystle was a retail manager for Starbucks. In her free time, she enjoys volunteering for the American Society of Quality and now, the Seattle Women in Data Science!

Rachel Wagner-Kaiser

Rachel received her PhD in astronomy and now works as an NLP Data Scientist and Manager at KPMG Digital Lighthouse. She specializes in using natural language processing and deep learning to help companies unlock unstructured data to solve a variety of business problems and drive value through automation. She loves to travel, eat good food, and hike cool new places (and ideally, all three at once).

Public Relations Team

Catherine Kay Magsino

Catherine is a Data Science and Analytics Consultant at The Spur Group, with over 11 years of experience as an analyst in the public and private sectors. Prior to joining Spur, she spent 8 years in the People Analytics field as an HR Data Analyst at Microsoft. She holds four bachelor degrees in Business Administration (Human Resources Management), Economics, Chemistry, and Biochemistry from the University of Washington, and completed an immersive data science bootcamp at Metis. She enjoys merging her technical, creative, and storytelling abilities to drive data-based business decisions and impact within organizations, and has also enjoyed bringing those skills into her role as the Public Relations Lead for the WiDS Puget Sound 2020 Conference.

Anna Briant

Anna is a Data Scientist with experience understanding business needs and building end-to-end technical solutions. Anna’s expertise range from writing complex SQL queries and training machine learning models to creating data visualizations in Tableau. Women’s advocate, aspiring chef, swimmer, and traveler are a few ways to describe her passions. In her time outside of work Anna is a leader for Lean In Seattle, driving overall strategy of the chapter including leading operational planning and facilitating team communication to move women forward. Anna has enjoyed using her organizational, event planning, and collaborative problem solving skills in her role as a Public Relations team member for WiDS Puget Sound 2020 Conference. Connect with Anna on LinkedIn

Kelly Stroh

I joined the data science field after 6 years working with environmental nonprofits. Since my passion for volunteering still needs an outlet, I leaped at the opportunity to be the social media coordinator for Data Circles. 2020 is my first year being involved with the Women in Data Science Puget Sound conference, and I'm excited for many more to come!

Hani Patel

Hani is a Data Analyst at T-Mobile where she works on building forecasting models such as Demand Planning forecasting, Vendor Ratio prediction to manage inventory and procurement under uncertainty. She holds a MS in Software Engineering and BE in Computer Science. She is passionate about data-driven solutions to tackle business problems and current affairs. Hani also enjoys mentoring the youth, reading articles, photographing and traveling. Connect with Hani on LinkedIn

Content Team

Arushi Prakash

Dr. Arushi Prakash is a data scientist at Zulily.com, an e-commerce company that sells clothing, footwear, toys, and home products, based in Seattle. At Zulily, she helps build recommender systems that power the website and email marketing campaigns. She entered the field in 2019, after finishing a doctorate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Tugce Ozturk

Tugce Ozturk is a data scientist in the SAP Concur data science team, working with deep learning algorithms for text understanding and image processing. Previously she worked at RealSelf and Arconic, using natural language understanding for analyzing user generated content and lab reports. Tugce completed her PhD and Postdoctoral studies in Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and worked on developing computer vision pipelines for 3D printing quality assessment.

Pamela Moriarty

Pamela Moriarty is a data scientist at Brightloom, where she builds personalization and marketing models that can scale across hundreds of brands, enabling them to grow and retain their customer base. Before joining Brightloom, Pamela was a data scientist at Zulily, working on personalization, supply chain, marketing, and experimentation problems. Pamela previously earned her PhD in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at University of Washington, where her work focused on developing statistical models to work with small, noisy datasets.

Niveditha Kalavakonda

Nivii Kalavakonda is a Ph.D student at the University of Washington, Seattle. She works with Prof. Blake Hannaford in the BioRobotics Lab, and is minoring in Science, Technology and Society Studies. Her research is at the intersection of human-robot interaction, computer vision and tech policy. Nivii also enjoys hiking, biking and volunteering at the Science Center and various meetups in Seattle.

Lanna Jin

Lanna is a Data Scientist at Expedia, where she builds ML algos to forecast marketing trends in the the meta search auction space. She's also heavily invested in Seattle's next generation of Data Scientists. As the former director and current technical advisor for Seattle's Insight Data Science program, she has mentored and managed over a hundred Data Scientists in the area. As a former academic, her doctorate is in computational & theoretical Ecology; and bachelors in Economics.

Speaker Relations Team

Kristin Mussar

Kristin is a data scientist passionate about using insights from data to improve lives. With cross-functional experience in life science research, business, and data science, she can bridge gaps between disciplines and drive projects to completion. She holds a PhD in Pharmacology, as well a certificate in Technology Entrepreneurship, from the University of Washington. With over 9 years of experience, she excels at critically analyzing data and communicating technical ideas to audiences with diverse backgrounds. Her skills range from experimental design, data cleaning, building and optimizing machine learning models, building data pipelines, and presenting the business impacts of machine learning models. Her data science portfolio includes models that predict the patients most at risk of developing infections in the ICU, the presence of whales in shipping lanes, the rating of hiking trails, and the context of a potentially health-related tweet. In her free time, she enjoys gardening, oil painting, and ballroom dance. Connect with Kristin on LinkedIn

Ivana Milovanovic

I'm a Data Scientist - Researcher at SAP Concur, with an academic background. Previously, I was a postdoc at University of Washington doing Computational Neuroscience.

Rebecca Grollman

Rebecca Grollman is a data visualization engineer at Zillow where she works on the Zillow Offers Data Science team. She digs into data and collaborates with stakeholders to build actionable reporting and deliver key results. Rebecca holds a BA in physics and anthropology from Ithaca College as well as an MS and PhD in physics from Oregon State University.

Rachel Wagner-Kaiser

Sponsorship Team

Parvathy Gopinathan Nair

Parvathy Nair is a senior data analyst focusing on employee experience 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 volunteers as the PR Lead for Data Circles to find partnerships with various organizations related to data science in the Greater Seattle Area. 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.

Luna Ou

Luna is a data enthusiast, trained economist and data analyst. Luna is currently an economist at an economic consulting firm. She received two master degrees in applied economics from Yale and Duke University. Ever since she moved to Seattle, she is using her free time to explore the impressive scenery of Pacific Northwest.

Vandana Lyer

Vandana is a Data Scientist with 6+ years of experience in software development. Her skills range from developing products in Java, Javascript and Python to end-to-end ML modeling. She has the curiosity to learn and is passionate about NLP and recommendation systems. Vandana has executed projects that range from the education domain to corporate platform management to security. She has worn multiple hats all through her career and she specializes in driving meaningful insights for projects on tight deadlines. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, photography and herping. Connect with Vandana on LinkedIn.

Houda Aynaou

Data scientist with a background in Finance and proven experience leveraging diverse datasets to derive actionable business insights. Adept at utilizing machine learning algorithms and explaining statistical concepts to a non-technical audience.