Top 20 Data pros you NEED to follow

Danilo McGarry

Danilo McGarry is the current Global Head of Ai & Automation at Alter Domus. Previously, he was the Head of Artificial intelligence & Machine Learning at CitiGroup (3rd largest US bank). Also, previous senior management of Ai & Automation at UnitedHealth Group (#5 on the Fortune 500, world’s largest healthcare company). Ai Journal and Ai Forum Board member. Mr. Danilo is also a part of the European Union Commission Ai Alliance (Europe’s body that sets rules/regulations around Ai).

His specialities include Driving business competitor advantage through the use of technologies such as Ai, OCR, NLP, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Artificial intelligence. Danilo helps companies transform through digital transformation programs and enabling operations to become more technology driven and in building client centric technology solutions that help drive more revenue.

He has been published in The Times Newspaper, Bloomberg InfoMoney, Ai Journal, Ai Magazine, Business Chief, Technology Magazine and other leading publications, Danilo is an experienced international keynote speaker and recognised as a global thought leader in the realms of Ai, Automation, RPA and Innovation. Ranked as top 10 people in the world for Automation by various respected bodies.

You can follow Danilo on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danilomcgarry/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/danilomcgarry?lang=en

Website:  http://www.danilomcgarry.com/

Kate Strachnyi

Kate Strachnyi is the founder of the DATAcated Academy – focused on delivering training on data visualization best practices (product agnostic). She is currently building over a dozen Data to Dashboard courses that can take you from looking at ‘data’ to designing a ‘dashboard’ using several tools: Tableau Public, Power BI, Qlik Sense, DOMO, Sisense, Excel, Datawrapper, Google Data Studio, Looker, Python (Plotly | Dash), R (Shiny), Chartio, Thoughtspot, etc.

Kate helps companies reach their audience and brand amplification for companies focused on innovation in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data science. Not only that, she is also LinkedIn’s Top Voice in Data Science & Analytics (2018 & 2019).

Kate Strachnyi is the author of The Disruptors: Data Science Leader, Journey to Data Scientist, Data Literacy for Kids (with Jordan Morrow) and Mothers of Data Science (with Kristen Kehrer). She is Advisory Board Member of Initiative for Analytics and Data Science Standards (IADSS), Advisory Board member for International Association for Data Quality, Governance and Analytics (IADQGA) and previously focused on risk management, governance, and regulatory response solutions for financial services institutions.

You can follow Kate on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-strachnyi-data/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Risk_Articles

Website: http://datacated.com/

Kieran Gilmurray

Kieran Gilmurray is a digital transformation, automation, data analytics and LinkedIn social media content strategy expert. Kieran has used his own time to become a qualified executive coach. Kieran loves to solve complicated problems others struggle with.

His specialities include Intelligent automation and robotic process automation (RPA), Data analytics and AI, Technology strategy and digital transformation, Fixing broken projects, programs or businesses, Executive coaching and mentoring technology leaders, Social media marketing, LinkedIn social selling, strategic brand building and much more. Mr. Gilmurray introduces digital technologies, social media and data analytics to transform business performance, figure out innovative ways to solve complicated problems, use digital marketing and social media to grow brand and sales of a company and helps CEOs, CFOs, and business leaders maximise the benefits of their investment in technology.

Through Kieran’s years of experience at global brands including Mercer, Pearson, and Liberty Insurance Ireland, he has generated millions and millions of dollars of value for businesses on a consistent basis. Kieran’s claim to fame is that he built his robot in 2000, years before today’s increasingly known billion-pound RPA brands existed.

You can follow Kieran on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kierangilmurray/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KieranGilmurray

Website: http://www.gilmurray.co.uk/

Susan Walsh

Susan Walsh is the Founder/ MD of The Classification Guru Ltd. Susan brings clarity and accuracy to data and help procurement and data teams work more effectively and efficiently, finding cost savings through spend and time management, supporting better, more informed business decisions, delivering a strong ROI and delivering back to your organisation faster and more cost-effectively than using large consultancies or spend analytics providers. While most people dread having to classify or cleanse data, she simply loves it.

Susan is hugely passionate about providing clients with accurate and meaningful data, and because of her really good industrial experience, she can do this much faster and more accurately than people who might look at their data infrequently. Susan has also developed a method to efficiently and accurately classify, cleanse and verify data to minimise the errors in the same amount of time.

You can follow Susan on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanewalsh/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClassificationG

Website: http://www.theclassificationguru.com/

Pascal Bornet

Pascal Bornet is recognized as a global expert and pioneer in the field of Intelligent Automation and Hyperautomation. He is strongly passionate about making our world more human with Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Technology in general. With over 20 years of industrial experience in digital transformations, he founded and led the “AI & Automation” practices at McKinsey and at Ernst & Young (EY). Mr. Bornet has been awarded Global Top Voice in Tech. 400k+ followers on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media

Pascal is the author of the Amazon best-seller and first reference book on the topic: “Intelligent Automation: Learn how to harvest AI to boost business and make our world more human”. Acclaimed by the profession including Gartner (“An essential reading”), HFS (“Masterful insight”). Not only that, he has also published articles in Forbes, Bloomberg, McKinsey Quarterly, Japan Times, Business Times, AI magazine, CIO Advisors and more. Currently, Mr. Pascal is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, Senior Advisor for the Institute of Robotic, Automation and Artificial Intelligence (IRPAAI), and Board Member for many innovative start-ups and also an influencer, a lecturer and a speaker.

You can follow Pascal on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascalbornet/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pascal_bornet?s=09

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWqeuXLp8-vX0XpFMHsOPow

Christina Stathopoulos

Christina Stathopoulos is the Analytical Lead at Waze, Google. After working 3.5 years on the core Google team, she has been moved to Waze to develop insights and tools to empower the teams to work smarter and their clients to get the most out of Waze Ads. Waze is a crowdsourced mobile navigation app, owned by Google. They use real-time data to create the fastest route for millions of drivers every day.

Christina is a businesswoman, statistician, analyst helping companies harness the power of data. She has driven analytics professional & strong supporter of lifelong learning. Christina really hopes to bring Big Data technologies to the masses & exploit the potentials of emerging technologies. She is bilingual & passionate about international relations. Not only that, she also is a regular international speaker supporting data analytics, emerging technologies & women in STEM.

You can follow Christina on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinastathopoulos/

Steve Nouri

Steve Nouri is a data science leader who has evolved the way people look at AI and innovations. An author, academic and technical leader by profession, he aims to inspire people through the latest technology trends and projects and empowers prospective data scientists through high-quality education and learning materials.

He is a member of the Forbes Technology Council, ICT Professional of the Year Gold Disruptor, and an accomplished influencer on LinkedIn. From humble beginnings as a junior software engineer, he has worked in different IT roles before joining the Australian Computer Society as the Head of Data Science and AI, and as an AI evangelist has spoken at countless international conferences.

Mr. Nouri currently lives in Sydney, Australia, and spends his time-sharing technical knowledge with prospective students and advising public policy towards a more sustainable and beneficial understanding of AI and deep tech.

You can follow Steve on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenouri/

Website: https://forms.gle/6xc9L4ZuJos3FL5q6

Aishwarya Srinivasan

Aishwarya Srinivasan is an AI & ML Innovation Leader at IBM Data & AI. She works cross-functionally with the product team, data science team and sales to research AI use-cases for clients by conducting discovery workshops and building assets to showcase business-value of the technology. She is an advocate for open-source technologies; currently a developer advocate for PyTorch Lightning and previously a contributor to Scikit Learn.

Ms. Srinivasan holds a post-graduate in Data Science from Columbia University. During her engagements, she primarily focuses on bringing in machine learning research to create business value. She has worked with clients all across the globe and has travelled internationally to London, Dubai, Istanbul, and India to lead and work with them. She is very focused on expanding her horizons in the machine learning research community including her recent Patent Award won in 2018 for developing a Reinforcement Learning model for Machine Trading.

Aishwarya is an ambassador for the Women in Data Science community, originating from Stanford University. She has a huge follower base on LinkedIn and actively organizes events and conferences to inspire budding data scientists. She has been spotlighted as a LinkedIn Top Voice 2020 for Data Science and AI, which features Top 10 Machine Learning influencers across the world. She is an ardent reader and has contributed to the scholastic community. To spread her knowledge in the space of data science, and to inspire budding Data Scientists, she actively writes blogs related to machine learning on her website.

You can follow Aishwarya on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aishwarya-srinivasan/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aishgrt

Website: https://aishgrt.wixsite.com/thepeculiarunicorn

Daliana Liu

Daliana Liu’s is currently working as a senior data scientist in Amazon’s Machine Learning (ML) Solutions Lab where she uses her experience to help young data scientists decide where they fit in this ever-expanding field. 

Today, Liu supports Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers seeking to incorporate more machine learning into their businesses. In a recent project, she worked with football coaches at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she and colleagues developed a ML model that predicts the results of the team’s plays, helping significantly reduce the time coaches spend on game planning. In another project, she helped Sportradar, a real-time sports data provider,  predict soccer goals using a 3D computer vision model.

Liu offers daily career advice on her LinkedIn page and pens a free newsletter, Nerdy Talk with Daliana, for early career data scientists. 

You can follow Daliana on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalianaliu/

Website: https://medium.com/@DalianaLiu

Harpreet Sahota

Harpreet Sahota is a data scientist at Comet, working with leadership to define and execute strategies that demonstrate the value of the data generated by our business while maintaining a rigorous set of principles to guide my practice. He is a head mentor to 2,500+ up-and-coming data scientists, and hold myself personally responsible for their career advancement by providing the best quality mentorship and technical guidance.

Mr. Harpreet is a data science generalist with strong business acumen, statistical background, modelling capabilities, data engineering, and machine learning engineering know-hows, constantly learning, self-motivated to try new things, and not intimidated by the prospect of applying newly learned tools to big, messy, complex, real-world data problems.

With over 37,000 followers on LinkedIn, he is also a host at The Artists of Data Science and Principal Data Science Mentor at Data Science Dream Job and has also worked as a Lead Data Scientist at Price Industries.

You can follow Harpreet on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harpreetsahota204/

Website: http://bit.ly/adsoh

Scott Taylor

Scott Taylor a.k.a. The Data Whisperer is currently working as a Principal Consultant at MetaMeta Consulting. He has worked with some of the world’s most iconic business data brands including Dun & Bradstreet, Nielsen, Microsoft, Kantar, NPD as well as start-ups such as Qoints and Spiceworks, In a variety of strategic marketing, GTM, innovation and consulting roles.

He has spent over two decades solving master data challenges with large global enterprises as well as guiding Tech Brand owners to leverage their reference data and taxonomy assets. He is an avid business evangelist and original thinker, and continually share my passion for the strategic value of foundational data through public speaking opportunities, blogs, videos, whitepapers, podcasts and all forms of marketing content.

Scott is the author of “Telling your Data Story – Data Storytelling for Data Management”, which is The Data Whisperer’s practical guide to explaining and understanding the strategic value of data management. Not only that, he has ranked top 10 Thought Leader & Influencer, #1 Big Data, #4 Business Strategy and #8 Digital Transformation at Thinkers360.

Taylor is a host for EM360 Cloudera Podcasts and a firm believer in “making your data do the work,” and have enlightened countless business executives to the value of proper data management by focusing on the strategic rationale and business alignment rather than technical implementation and system integration.

You can follow Scott on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmztaylor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stdatawhisperer

Greg Coquillo

Greg Coquillo, a technology manager at Amazon and also a Global Business Leader with 10 years of experience and skills including Global Networking, EBITDA Optimization, Pricing Management, Margin Management, Product Management, Program Management, Operations and Supply Chain Management, Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and Continuous Improvement.

His passion for solving business use cases, such as Operative Pricing for commodity-based products has led me to deep dive the world of Artificial Intelligence. As the Head of Global Expansion of Amazon’s Private Brands through Safety and Compliance, he uses technology and work with Data Scientists, Software Engineers and Business Intelligence Engineers to leverage Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics to design predictive models that enhance business decision-making and performance to accelerate growth, reduce Time to Market of products, monitor cross-geo compliance and import requirements, and ensure customer safety.

Mr. Greg is always curious and eager to learn how new technology affects our daily lives, and he love to support communities on their quest to adopt Artificial Intelligence across industries. Feel free to contact him, if you have Data Science projects that you’d like to be showcased on this platform for visibility.

You can follow Greg on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-coquillo/

Jeremy Connell-Waite

Jeremy Connell-Waite leads IBM’s “Wild Ducks” global commercial storytelling studio, where we create compelling pitches and presentations for purpose-driven brands. They help IBM partners to show how good humans and technology can work together to positively impact people, the planet and the bottom line with IBM technologies and services. He also founded IBM’s Communications Thinking program where he coaches IBMs global partners in the art and science of commercial storytelling and speechwriting to build narratives around large transformation projects.

He has been voted the #1 Most Influential Person on Twitter for #BigData by Onalytica, Top 100 Digital Marketer Globally (Digital Scout), Top 25 Tech Profession on the Tyto Power 100, Top 10 Most Influential Tech Professionals by B2B Magazine, Top 30 Most Influential Digital Marketer in the world by Onalytica, The 3rd most Influential Social Media Marketer in the UK The Drum and much more.

Mr. Jeremy is passionate about helping to solve the climate crisis and give keynotes to business and university lectures about activism and how technology can help to solve political, social and environmental problems. Not only that, he also hosts ‘The Ten Words Podcast’ (inspired by a book I wrote) and release a new episode most weeks. Each focuses on a famous person who has changed the world with their “big ideas, small words and short sentences”. Jeremy has owned his own agency, written four books and worked for brands such as Nike, MTV, Rovio, LVMH, Uber and Vodafone. Waite has worked on strategic accounts with Facebook’s largest ad agency and led marketing strategy teams at Adobe and Salesforce.

You can follow Jeremy on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremypaulwaite/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremywaite

Website: https://jeremy.earth/

Monica Rogati

Monica Rogati is a technical and strategic data science advisor. She often serves as a fractional data executive, bringing immediate focus and impact while giving companies time and bandwidth to identify the right long-term fit. Monica works with a variety of clients, ranging from 5 to 8,000 employees and spanning several industries.

Before becoming an independent advisor, she was Jawbone’s VP of Data, where she built and lead a team of top data scientists and engineers focused on intelligent data products that promote a healthier lifestyle. Prior to Jawbone, Rogati was one of the early members of the LinkedIn data science team, where she developed and improved LinkedIn’s key data products for matching jobs to passive candidates, discovering people you may know and recommending jobs.

Monica has a strong background in applied machine learning (CMU CS PhD), data science, wearables and health, social network analysis, recommender systems and natural language processing. She was ranked as Fast Company’s 100 most creative people in business and Fortune Magazine Big Data All-Stars.

You can follow Monica on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrogati/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrogati

Website: https://medium.com/@mrogati

DJ Patil

DJ Patil currently is a board member for Devoted Health, a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, and an Advisor to Venrock Partners. He was appointed by President Obama to be the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist where his efforts led to the establishment of nearly 40 Chief Data Officer roles across the Federal government. He also established new health care programs including the Precision Medicine Initiative and the Cancer Moonshot, new criminal justice reforms including the Data-Driven Justice and Police Data Initiatives that cover more than 94 million Americans, as well as leading the national data efforts.

Mr.Patil has been active in national security and for his efforts was awarded by Secretary Carter the Department of Défense Medal for Distinguished Public Service which the highest honour the department bestows on a civilian. He was CTO for Devoted Health, led the product teams at RelateIQ which was acquired by Salesforce, was founding board member for Crisis Text Line which works to use new technologies to provide on demand mental and crisis support, and was a member of the venture firm Greylock Partners. He also was Chief Scientist, Chief Security Officer and Head of Analytics and Data Product Teams at the LinkedIn Corporation where he co-coined the term Data Scientist. He has also held a number of roles at Skype, PayPal, and eBay.

You can follow DJ Patil on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpatil/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dpatil

Website: https://twitter.com/dpatil

Lillian Pierson

Lillian has written 6 books which were published by Wiley & Sons and include ‘Data Science for Dummies’, authored 8 online courses on LinkedIn, and has trained over 1.3 Million data professionals. Lilian with her fantastic team has built a thriving online community of 650k+ data professionals. Lillian has supported over 10% of the Fortune 100 companies and helps data professionals become world-class data leaders and entrepreneurs.

Lillian has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, National Geographic, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and The Guardian among dozens of other publications for her work.

You can follow Lillian and her initiatives on the following channels and links:

Website for free masterclass on Monetizing Data Expertise: https://www.data-mania.com/monetize-data-expertise/

Website for Free Data Entrepreneur’s Toolkit: https://www.data-mania.com/data-entrepreneur-toolkit/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lillianpierson/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Strategy_Gal

Bernard Marr

Bernard Marr is one of the world’s most highly respected experts when it comes to business performance, digital transformation and the intelligent use of data in business. In that capacity he has worked with and advised many of the world’s best-known organisations including Accenture, Astra Zeneca, Bank of England, Barclays, BP, Cisco, CRH, DHL, Fujitsu, Gartner, HSBC, IBM, Jaguar Land Rover, Mars, Ministry of Defence, Microsoft, the United Nations, Vodafone, Walgreens Walmart, among many others.

He is the author of 15 books and hundreds of high-profile reports and articles, including the international best-sellers ‘Data Strategy’, ‘Big Data in Practice’, ‘Big Data’, ‘Key Business Analytics’, ‘Key Performance Indicators’, ‘The Intelligent Company’, ‘Managing and Delivering Performance’ and ‘Strategic Performance Management’. His books have been translated into over 20 languages and have earned numerous Amazon No 1 bestselling positions, the CMI Management Book of the Year award, the Axiom book award and the WHSmith best business book award.

LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that reaches millions of readers.

You can follow Benard on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardmarr/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BernardMarr

Website: https://www.bernardmarr.com/

Kristen Kehrer

Kristen was a LinkedIn Top Voice in Data Science and Analytics for 2018. Kristen has experience modeling projects that have been in e-commerce while working for companies whose products supported SMBs. Kristen has experience in areas that include cluster analysis, retention modeling, and is most proud of an off-label use case of the TBATS algorithm to determine customers with a seasonal usage pattern so that the company wouldn’t assume the customer’s quiet season was a retention risk.

During Kristen’s first 2 years of my career, as a wee data scientist, she built 100’s of econometric ARIMA models and neural net models in the Utility industry for electric and gas load forecasting.

Kristen was the co-author of “Mothers of Data Science” with Kate Strachnyi who is also on this list further up.

By January 2019, Kristen had built an established consulting business to help people and businesses with their data challenges.

You can direct message Kristen on LinkedIn, in the link below, for media kit with stats and how Kristen can help your business achieve data success.

Kristen’s passions include diversity in data and bridging the communication gap between data scientists and the business.

You can follow Kristen on the following channels:

Website: https://datamovesme.com

Email: kristen@datamovesme.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-kehrer-datamovesme/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DataMovesHer

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo5T7LLTg6DIrozw9UaWKsw

Craig Brown

Craig Brown is the lead Big Data, Data Scientist and Cloud – Architect / Engineer / Analytics / Administrator at Lead Big Data SME. He is a top Techpreneur and Technology expert covering 30+ years of various technological and innovative projects for top fortune 1000 companies. He is also a Big Data, Data Science and Data Analytics subject matter expert. As a technology & business consultant, in the technology industry, he seeks to offer advice that minimizes the use of technical jargon and maximizes the use of real language, helping ease challenges that most companies and professionals face daily.

Brown has doctoral degrees from University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University, an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and BS degrees from University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Brown has earned 25 professional certifications in technology & business and is a leading expert in the IT arena.

You can follow Craig on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/profcraigbrown/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/twtrcob

Website: http://craigobrown.me/

Anima Anandkumar

Anima Anandkumar is a Bren professor at Caltech CMS department and a director of machine learning research at NVIDIA. Her research spans both theoretical and practical aspects of large-scale machine learning. In particular, she has spearheaded research in unsupervised AI, deep learning, optimization and tensor methods.

Previously, she was a principal scientist at Amazon Web Service, where she has enabled machine learning on the cloud infrastructure. Anima is the recipient of several awards and honors such as the Bren named chair professorship at Caltech, IEEE fellowship, Alfred. P. Sloan Fellowship, Young investigator awards from the Air Force and Army research offices, Faculty fellowships from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Adobe, and several best paper awards.

She was recently nominated to the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network consisting of leading experts from academia, business, government, and the media. She has been featured in documentaries by PBS, KPCC, wired magazine, and in articles by MIT Technology review, Forbes, Yourstory, O’Reilly media, and so on. At Caltech, she is the co-director of the center for Decision Making, Optimization and Learning (DOLCIT) and is on the scientific advisory committee for the Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST). Anima has worked to democratize AI, promote ethical use and improve diversity and inclusion in AI. She was awarded the good tech award 2018 by NYTimes for her efforts.

You can follow Anima on the following channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anima-anandkumar/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnimaAnandkumar

Website: http://users.cms.caltech.edu/~anima