Work Experience

Full-Time Employment

2019-2025. Columbia University, Research Fellow & Ph.D. Candidate.

• Manage over a dozen multi-year research projects involving quantitative (data collection, processing, statistical analysis), qualitative (interviewing, archival), and computational research design, analysis, implementation, and presentation.

• Research Areas: Primary topic areas include political economy, the criminal legal system, algorithms and surveillance, and urban development. Projects include examining policing and real estate development, algorithms and contested authority in the criminal legal system, racial disparity in economic access and imprisonment, and protests during economic crisis.

• Teaching: Teaching Fellow, Sociology Master’s Thesis Seminar I (2022) and Sociology Master’s Thesis Seminar II (2023)

• Departmental Service: Co-Coordinator, Sociology of Algorithms Workshop, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. (2020-2022). Coordinator, Racial Capitalism Working Group, Center for the Study of Social Difference, (2020-2021)

2015-2019. Digitas, Senior Data Scientist.

• Deliverables: Delivered 10 long-term data science projects for Fortune 500 clients, ad-hoc requests from clients and internal teams, and dozens of analyses for new business pitches. Employed exploratory data analysis, predictive modeling, statistical and machine learning techniques, data ingestion and transformation pipelines, and interactive visualizations using R, Python, SQL, and Apache Spark (PySpark). Managed big data projects in distributed cloud computing environments including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

• Leadership: Managed and led data science project teams for clients, research and development, and pro bono partners. Supervised junior team members. Developed long-term project goals and coordinated data science work across departments and national team. Initiated internal team training documentation by building and maintaining team-wide Agile documentation hub and video training repository. Designed and taught introductory trainings for technical and non-technical audiences.

• Initiatives: Advanced Research & Development efforts on natural language processing (NLP) and prediction bias and fairness. Led pro-bono projects for non-profits.

• As an analyst (2015-2016): Managed data projects in Excel and Tableau, presented insights and visualizations. Increased efficiency within first 4 months on job by building data pipeline in Python to clean, transform, and merge client data for monthly report. Won junior staff client pitch, designed ad campaign and developed success metrics.

Research Experience

2023-Present. Incite, Researcher. 

• Criminal Legal Algorithms, Technology, and Expertise, Trust Collaboratory, Project Director (2023-Pres): Lead qualitative interview, online archival, and descriptive quantitative research on expertise and contested authority in probabilistic DNA profiling (2024 paper), facial recognition technology, video surveillance, predictive policing, and risk assessments. I have designed research agendas, developed interview protocols, conducted and coded interviews, conducted online archival research, written and published empirical work, and supervised undergraduate and graduate research assistants.

• Data and Racial Inequality Project, Graduate Researcher (2024-Pres): Conduct large-scale data analysis using mobility data to address questions of urban racial segregation and economic access.

• Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab, Graduate Researcher (2023-Pres): Collect archival materials for natural language processing project on social movement rhetorical evolution 1960-present.

2020-Present. Astoria Public Safety Research Team, Volunteer Researcher.

• Designed, conducted and analyzed 117 interviews with local business owners about police interactions in the community to inform community events, resource sheets, and create a policy report addressing the challenges and opportunities for non-carceral solutions to public safety.

• Built web apps and analyzed public administrative data on the use of 911 and 311 in local assembly district to advise local policy.

2020-2022. Columbia Justice Lab, Research Fellow.

• Pennsylvania Solitary Study: Developed and executed data analysis of large-scale, statewide administrative data sets. Employed statistical techniques such as survival analysis and decomposition analysis to calculate disparities in cumulative risks of solitary confinement first occurrence and duration by demographic characteristics. Published high-impact paper finding that 1 in 9 Black men in the state are held in solitary confinement by the time they are 32, more than 8 times the risk white men face. Other projects investigate prison intake risk assessment algorithms.

• Rikers Island Longitudinal Study: Provided rapid analysis of survey responses to investigate the impact of Covid-19 and congregate settings for individuals released from Rikers to impact policy in New York.

2017-2022. Data for Black Lives, Volunteer Researcher.

• Manage teams on web development of oral history archive, 13-lane research collection on criminal legal surveillance technology, and over 60-person volunteer teams during annual conferences.

• Conduct analyses on algorithmic bias and technological surveillance and develop criteria for algorithmic auditing, fairness, and transparency for the #NoMoreDataWeapons campaign.

2021-2022. Boston University Department of Sociology, Graduate Research Assistant.

• Collected, FOIA requested, cleaned, and analyzed data on 911 and 311 calls to the police during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns across multiple US cities

• Created interactive data visualization webpage for exploratory data analysis

2018-2019. ACLU of Massachusetts, Data Scientist (Pro Bono).

• Conducted analyses, advised, and provided data peer review for 5 cases and reports, including for the successful overturn of tens of thousands of tainted drug sentencings in the CPCS v. Attorney General case. 

• Led 8-person team to create a data cleaning, standardization, and geocoding package and interactive Shiny dashboard for Boston policing and arrest data.

• Other projects included an investigation of drug prosecution in the state, police militarization, and the benefits of declining to prosecute misdemeanors and low-level felonies.

2013-2016. Brown University, Research Assistant. 

• Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (2016): Collected, analyzed, and catalogued articles on policing practices from 1975-2016 in the U.S. for the How Structural Racism Works project.

• Resilient Rhode Island Research Team (2014): Revised environmental policy proposals and organized community panels of environmental activists, politicians, and community leaders as part of the Resilient Rhode Island Act. 

• Department of Sociology (2014): Cleaned and analyzed quantitative survey results on gender and educational attainment.

• Department of Sociology (2013): Parsed long-form interviews on undergraduate identity formation.

2012. City of Boston, William Ward Public Service Fellow.

Journalism & Media Experience

2014-2015. TechTarget, Editorial Assistant & Data Consultant. 

2012-2015. Brown Motion Pictures, Head of Production. 

2013-2014. Brown Political Review, Media Board Content Creator. 

2014. Boston Neighborhood Network Television, Video Production Intern. 

Skills

Coding: R, Python, Apache Spark (PySpark), SQL, Stata, SPSS, Javascript (D3.js), HTML, CSS

Technical: ArcGIS, QGIS, Excel, Tableau, Shiny, AWS (EC2 & S3), GCP, Linux, LaTeX, Jira, Git, NVivo, Atlas.ti

Research: Statistical Analysis, Data Cleaning, Writing, Editing, Interviewing, Causal Analysis, Archival Analysis, Network Analysis, Natural Language Processing, FOIA Requests

Language: Spanish (proficient)

Datasets: Census, ACS, NYC OpenData (Arrests, 311/911, DOB, DCP), SafeGraph, Advan, CrowdTangle, comScore, Acxiom