I am a Machine Learning Engineer & Data Scientist in New York City that is always trying to learn and grow. I have over 7 years of experience in data science and 5 years of experience leading projects, managing teams and mentoring junior data scientists. I have worked on projects in supervised learning, unsupervised learning, auto-machine learning, optimization, entity resolution, natural language processing, geo-spatial data analysis, econometrics and marketing. I am an Apache Spark enthusiast and have been using it extensively in both Python and Scala since 2017. I strive to lead by being a positive example and have a passion for technology, elevating my teammates as well as solving challenging problems. With a PhD in Computational Applied Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin I have a strong background in both quantitative methods and scientific software engineering. My focus during graduate school was on researching discontinuous Galerkin methods and finite element methods for simulating photo-electrochemical solar cells which led me to contribute multiple times to the open source finite element library, deal.ii. In my free time, I proudly serve in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, the uniformed volunteer component of the United States Coast Guard. In another life, I was a competitive athlete and coach in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for over 17 years. During my career I trained with and competed against the best fighters all over the world. In 2012, I won the World Championships and in 2015 achieved the rank of 1st degree Black Belt from 2x Pan American Champion Professor Dave Ginsberg. I also had the privlage of coaching hundreds of students and I am proud to have created local, national and world champions. Despite having to stop training, I am grateful for the all experiences and to have had an amazing coach along with great mentors, sponsors, friends, teammates and students.