Meet the Chicago Executive Board!
Angela Li
Angela Li is the R Spatial Advocate for the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago, where she teaches R to the UChicago community! She is the founder of R-Ladies Chicago, having founded our chapter in July 2017. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from UChicago in June 2018. Angela loves using R to make maps!
Kristi Angel
Kristi Angel is a Data Scientist on the experimentation platform team at Groupon. She has a meandering background that includes a brief stint in the Army and more than a decade in the food and beverage industry! Kristi earned her B.S. in Physics from the University of Washington and her M.S. in Statistics at Loyola University Chicago. She enjoys mentoring developing data scientists and members of marginalized groups navigating career pivots. Beyond utilizing R as a means to make sense from data, she feels connected to the R community’s commitment to inclusion and diversity, and the opinionated application of programming best practices in the statistical and data sciences.
Winnie Cai
Winnie Cai, CFA, has extensive experience in various fields in the investment industry. She is currently a CMBS Analyst at S&P Global. Previously, she worked as a Modeling Consultant at Thomson Reuters where she used APIs powered by Python and R to assist her clients with their investment research needs. Winnie Cai graduated from University of Illinois at Chicago with a Master’s Degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Financial Markets & Risk Management. Winnie Cai is dedicated to helping corporations improve operating efficiency using advanced technologies.
Zaynaib Giwa
Zaynaib (Ola) Giwa is a Clinical Data Analyst at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Zaynaib Giwa is a self-taught programmer who uses her talents as a consultant of small businesses and startups. Zaynaib has redesigned and maintains a website for the City of Champaign- Urbana Regional Planning Commission, the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, and Performers Music. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois with a Bachelor’s Degree in Statistics and a Masters Degree in Library and Information Sciences. You can read about her latest projects on her blog, zenagiwa.wordpress.com.
Sushmita Gopalan
Sushmita Gopalan is a data scientist at the Northwestern Neighbourhood and Network Initiative at Northwestern University. She uses network and spatial analysis to understand the ways in which social ties, space and their intersection influence behaviour. She has a B.A./M.A. in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and an M.A. in Computational Social Science from the University of Chicago. Sushmita uses R to wrangle data and make pretty maps and graphs.
Katherine Simeon
Katherine Simeon is a PhD Candidate in Communication Sciences & Disorders at Northwestern University. Her research looks at how experience with sound (or lack thereof) impacts language processing in children and individuals with hearing loss, specifically cochlear implant users. Katherine uses R for data cleaning, statistical analyses, & data visualization. In her free time, she enjoys knitting (both literally and with knitr) and running.
Abby Smith
Abby Smith is PhD Candidate in Statistics at Northwestern University. Her research looks at the impact of entity resolution error on social network inferences, with an interest in global health and development. She also is a teaching assistant for the Data Science sequence, which focuses on using R for data cleaning and machine learning pipelines. She is currently a Women in Data Science (WiDS) ambassador for Chicago. When not talking about the beauty of R to anyone who will listen, she enjoys running, hiking, and drinking dangerous amounts of coffee.
Aarthi Vemuri
Aarthi Vemuri is a Senior Marketing & Modeling Analyst at Swanson Health Products. She uses R to understand the impact of marketing promotions on consumer behavior and to conduct pricing analyses. She graduated from BITS, Pilani with a Information Systems degree and a M.S. in Business Analytics from University of Connecticut. Along with work, Aarthi enjoys painting and photography.
Scarlett Winters
Scarlett Winters is a Data Integration Analyst at Strata Decision Technology and a Master’s student in Information Systems Management at Loyola Quinlan School of Business. She is interested in how to use R to explore inequalities toward the LGBTQ community, healthcare issues, as well as broader social-political topics. Scarlett has previous experience conducting analyses and visualizations within the telemedicine sector and academia. Presently, Scarlett is working with her Loyola colleagues to build an application based on emergency response data for Puerto Rican communities to use before, during, and after natural disasters. In her spare time, Scarlett enjoys running, traveling, cooking, and butch fashion.
Board Alumni
We are grateful to former R-Ladies Chicago Board Members:
Amy Yang (2018-2019)
Anne Corinne Carroll (2018-2019)
Abhinaya Konduru (2018-2019)
Caroline K. Williams (2018-2019)
Amanda Dobbyn (2017-2018)
Kaelen Medeiros (2017-2018)
