Women in Data Science @ Penn Conference
Speakers

Krystal Barker Buissereth, CFA® charterholder, is a Managing Director and the Head of Financial Wellness at Morgan Stanley. In this role, she is responsible for working with corporate clients and organizations on creating, implementing and managing financial wellness programs that meet the needs of their employees. Financial Wellness is part of the Morgan Stanley at Work suite of financial solutions, which include Retirement, Financial Wellness and the equity administration offering including Shareworks by Morgan Stanley and E*Trade Corporate Services.

Financial Wellness provides personalized financial education, advice and solutions to help employees of Morgan Stanley’s clients improve their financial knowledge and as well as identifying their needs. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Krystal held a number of leadership roles on the Digital Strategy team at Goldman Sachs providing strategic leadership for the development of new product and service offerings across employer financial wellness programs and direct to consumer wealth management services for the Ayco and Goldman Sachs wealth management businesses.

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Krystal was a business development strategist for the head of Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management focused on assessing growth and cost saving opportunities for the Division. Before her role at Deutsche Bank, Krystal was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers/Barclays, executing capital markets transactions for the Firm’s most strategic clients.

Krystal serves as a New York Board Trustee of the Point Foundation, an organization dedicated to the empowerment of promising LGBTQ students through scholarship funding and leadership training. Krystal earned her MBA with Honors from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania and her A.B Cum Laude in Mathematics & Economics from Bowdoin College.

Jeri Culp is the Director of Data Science in the Advanced Compute and Solutions group at HP Inc. In this role, she is responsible for driving breakthrough innovations, developing community engagement, business development and delivering customer solutions to market.

She started her career as a software developer doing image analysis and object detection, product definition and customer usability.  In her 32 years at HP, her career includes multiple leadership roles focused on analyzing cost efficiencies in Operations management leading teams creating new business models and driving business strategy.

Jeri received her bachelor’s degree in computer science from Colorado State University.  She continues to live in Colorado where she is an active alumni and volunteers in local schools promoting diversity and inclusion in STEM degrees.

Homa Hosseinmardi is a senior research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Computational Social Science Lab (CSSLab), led by Duncan Watts. Her research centers around holistic and scaled studies of the information ecosystem and digital technologies, and general features of her work include carefully considering the whole spectrum from pure user intention to pure platform design, performing cross-platform analysis, and putting observations into context when studying complex systems. She is the lead researcher of the Penn Media Accountability Project (PennMAP) and co-founder of the CyberSafety workshop series, co-located with conferences such as CIKM and the Web Conference. Dr. Hosseinmardi was the recipient of the “outstanding research award’’ in her PhD, and over the years, her research has been featured in the press and published in more than 30 peer-reviewed papers, including computer science conferences and top journals such as PNAS, Science Advances, TKDE, and IMWUT.

Sarah Hu is a senior at the Wharton School studying statistics and finance. She is currently a football analytics intern with the Philadelphia Eagles. Previously she had worked with the New York Knicks and Detroit Lions.

Sukanya Joshi is a second-year MSE Data Science student at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Data Science Research Assistant at both CIS and Wharton departments at Penn, and her main research interest involves using natural language processing (NLP) to study how technology affects human psychology at scale. Her NLP research about COVID-19 Contact Tracing has been published in the PLOS ONE Scientific Journal, and she has previously held internships at Coursera and Mercer.

I’m Christine Lam, a high school junior studying at Hong Kong International School. In the summer of 2022, I had the opportunity of attending the Data Science Academy hosted by the Wharton Global Youth Program with Professor Linda Zhao. I am super interested in the data science and AI field, and this program allowed me to deepen my appreciation and understanding of data science, resulting in a final project about gas price trends in the US. I also am passionate about public speaking/debate, entrepreneurship, hanging out with friends and family, and my dog, Cooper.

Jennifer Li is a senior at Westlake High School in Austin, TX. She is a varsity swim team captain and a four-year varsity swimmer. Jennifer has a strong interest in data science and data analytics. She attended the Data Science Academy organized by Wharton’s Global Youth Program in her Junior summer and is now working as a data science intern at Shower Stream, an Austin-based start-up company funded by National Science Foundation. Jennifer has won a number of awards, including the DECA International Career Development Award and Top Ten in the Financial Consulting competition, the President’s Volunteer Service Award, and the Student Infographic Challenge Award from the International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in Economy

Hey everyone! My name is Brian, and I’m a high school senior from the Bay Area in California. I’m fascinated with the digital side of our world and all the information it holds under the surface. From my statistics and computer science courses, I discovered the field of data science. Before Penn’s summer Data Science program, I would’ve never dreamt of being able to model such complex datasets and draw real-world conclusions from them. I’m a pretty curious person, and if you ever see me outside of the classroom, there’s a good chance I’ll be reading an article online or exploring something new. In my free time, I really enjoy going outdoors for a run, playing soccer, and getting boba with my friends. I love getting some fresh air and enjoying nature!

As a data storyteller, Sarah Norman brings a wealth of experience to Tiktok where she is a data and sales leader bringing measurement to the world’s largest advertisers. Previously, she spent 6 years at Google working with Fortune 50 companies. Sarah is also a Senior Analytics Fellow at Wharton and serves as a mentor on AI and Analytics student projects.  Additionally, she was a Senior Digital Advisor for the Kamala Harris 2020 presidential campaign and is often seen on network news stations sharing political perspectives.

Julie is the former Chief Marketing and Experience Officer of Party City. Throughout her career, Julie has held leadership positions challenging and transforming the way organizations think about and engage with their customers. From the Chief Storyteller at SAP, reinventing Dodge while CMO at Daimler Chrysler to transforming marketing as SVP at Walmart. Julie has a track record for innovation, collaboration and driving great results. As well, Julie has sat on several Boards including Integral Ad Science, Fourth Wall Media, Ride, and is a current board member of The Digital Marketing Institute and The Forbes Marketing Executive Council.

Dr. Julia Stoyanovich is Institute Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Associate Professor of Data Science, Director of the Center for Responsible AI, and member of the Visualization and Data Analytics Research Center at New York University.  Julia’s goal is to make “Responsible AI” synonymous with “AI”.  She works towards this goal by engaging in academic research, education and technology regulation, and by speaking about the benefits and harms of AI to practitioners and members of the public. Julia’s research interests include AI ethics and legal compliance, data management and AI systems, and computational social choice.  She has co-authored over 100 academic publications, and has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Le Monde.  Julia has been teaching courses on responsible data science and AI to students, practitioners and the general public.  She is a co-author of “Data, Responsibly”, an award-winning comic book series for data science practitioners and enthusiasts, and “We are AI”, a comic book series for the general audience.  Julia is engaged in technology regulation in the US and internationally, having served on the New York City Automated Decision Systems Task Force, by mayoral appointment, among other roles. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University, and a B.S. in Computer Science and in Mathematics & Statistics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Julia’s work has been generously supported by the US National Science Foundation, Pivotal Ventures and Meta Responsible AI, among others.

Professor Todd is a Research Associate of Penn’s Population Studies Center. She serves as an Associate Editor for the American Economic Review and the Journal of Human Capital.

Her main fields of research are social program evaluation, labor economics, and microeconometrics. She has published papers on the determinants of cognitive achievement, testing for discrimination in motor vehicle searches, sources of racial wage disparities, and methods for evaluating and optimally designing conditional cash transfer programs.

She is currently working on implementing a large-scale randomized school incentive program in Mexican high schools, on analyzing the effects of school vouchers in Chile and on assessing the effects of government regulation on the operation of the privatized pension market in Chile.

Karen Wang is a senior at Phillips Academy passionate about the intersection of data and design. Her research at the Penn Center for Learning Analytics focuses on analyzing the effects of point-based rewards systems and hints on student learning efficiency. As the Co-Founder of the Andover Statistics Group, she leads a team of students in analyzing archival and survey data on key topics of her school, such as overenrollment and students’ Roe v. Wade stances. She is also the Managing Digital Editor of her school newspaper, The Phillipian, where she creates detailed infographics displaying data on student life. Karen’s research has been presented at the 24th Human Computer Interaction International Conference and published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 13332 Adaptive Instructional Systems. Her infographics were finalists for the National Scholastic Press Association Design of the Year Informational Graphics.

Hello! My name is Joanna Yang, a current junior at the University of Pennsylvania studying Statistics and Finance in the Wharton School with a minor in Computer Science, while also pursuing a master’s degree in Data Science. I’m participating in the WiDS conference as Vice President of Wharton Analytics Fellows and a past participant of the Analytics Accelerator, which is a program that connects undergraduate and graduate students interested in data science to corporations with business problems. Through this collaboration, we provide data science solutions to our corporate clients, including rigorous model building and NLP analysis. I’m super passionate about data science and am excited to be speaking at the WiDS conference!

Susan B. Davidson is an American computer scientist known for work in databases and bioinformatics. She is Weiss Professor of Computer and Information Science at University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation work on distributed databases included results on statistical and mathematical techniques for data resolution as well as mechanisms to avoid database conflicts.

Susan has also done research in bioinformatics, where her work (with collaborators) on data integration was commercialized by GeneticXChange. She also serves on the board of the Computing Research Association.

As the Executive Director of Wharton AI & Analytics for Business, Mary Purk leads the academic research center that focuses on the development and application of cutting-edge analytics methods. Through AIAB’s experiential programs, Ms. Purk connects students, academics, and professionals across multiple industries to solve complex, real-world business challenges using machine learning, AI, and big data.

Ms. Purk has held other principal roles at Nielsen and IRI developing and implementing enterprise-wide analytic platforms focused on customers and brand equity. Her expertise includes forecast models, consumer segmentations, marketing mix models, product assortments, pricing, and digital strategies.

Other work experience includes leading the Retail Research Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and consulting roles with Accenture and AT Kearney.

Ms. Purk is a proud MBA alumnus of the University of Chicago Booth and the University of Illinois. Ms. Purk has designed and instructed executive education courses, presented at numerous conferences, and published papers in the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Retailing.

Linda Zhao is a Professor of Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Linda specializes in modern machine learning methods.

After getting her PhD in Mathematics/Statistics from Cornell University, Linda taught in UCLA, Los Angeles for one year. She joined the Wharton School in 1994. She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the Mathematics department of Nankai University, China.

Linda’s research area covers from Bayesian analysis, nonparametric analysis and numerical computation. She mainly publishes in international leading journals. Current on going projects include forecasting house prices, inference for high dimensional data, data with measurement errors and post model selection inferences. Linda also enjoys teaching very much.