OUR LEADERS

CHAPTER LEADERS & VOLUNTEERS

THE BOARD

Supporting members chose the board in November elections every other year.

GINGER CASTLE

President

Hi, I'm Ginger. I am on the board because I stand for empowering women to succeed. I am passionate about data science and feel it is time for me to step forward in a more formal way to offer my ideas, skillset, and vision toward the efforts of this great organization. I am most interested in research and analysis that can support the organization and how we can grow the number of participants and members.

JOAN PHARR

Secretary

Hi, I'm Joan.

JULIA KUZNETSOVA

Director of Programs

I am advocating for three programs: Data Science Book Club, Code with Me and Kaggle Competition Review. Data Science Book Club will focus on reading and discussing books written by Data Science practitioners who consider new methods, areas to apply statistical methods and problems in the field. This is a continuation of the program we had all these years since the beginning of the Data Scientista Society and we usually have five book club meetings in a year.

Code with Me will be a continuation of an online program that was started by Kelsey McDonald. The goal of the program is to increase familiarity with types of problems frequently encountered in Data Science and popular solutions for such problems. During a meeting the presenter will introduce a real world problem, and walk the audience through the code that presents a Data Science solution of the problem. I hope that we will be able to have three sessions in this program in the next year.

Kaggle Competition Review will be a new online program; the goal of this program will be to increase member familiarity with the state of the art models in Data Science. During a meeting within this program a presenter will go over one of the recent Kaggle competitions and present one or several solutions that received the highest scores. I hope that we can have two presentations next year as part of this program.

LINSDAY BEYAK

Vice President

As a host for the virtual group, I have become familiar with the organization's leaders, members, and goals. I am pleased to expand my role and responsibilities beyond hosting and officially add to DSS's future success as a member of the board. I believe in the mission of DSS and would like to be a part of its growth next year.

MARY DOWD

I am on the board so that I can help further our mission to educate and support one another towards competency, success, and leadership in and around data science. I'm passionate about helping women rise through the ranks as people leaders, thought leaders, and subject matter experts in traditionally male spaces. I believe strongly that diversity is key to the success of teams and organizations because great ideas and products are born from collaborations involving a variety of experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, and personalities. Diversity of thought is especially important in Data Science, where our personal biases become baked into machine learning models that can make life-changing decisions

NYDIA ASSAF ARAGON

As part of the DSS Board, I want to continue expanding the group's footprint internationally and partner with universities for speakers and Hackathon projects. I love to see people come together to approach social justice problems through data.

Data allows us to see a situation from different perspectives, to me that is very much the strength that diversity of thought brings to team work and problem solving. Thus far my efforts to expand our DSS engagement, have been focused on Latin America (Costa Rica and Ecuador). We hope to continue expanding to other continents and countries in 2023. If you would like to partner on these endeavors please feel free to reach out.