Lorena Mesa: Using Data Ethically
Channel: Chi Hack Night
Date: 21/03/2019

Political scientist turned coder, Lorena Mesa is a data engineer on GitHub’s software intelligence systems team, Director on the Python Software Foundation, and PyLadies Chicago co-organizer.

Lorena’s time at Obama for America and her subsequent graduate research required her to learn how to transform messy, incomplete data into intelligible analysis on topics like predicting Latinx voter behavior. It’s this unique background in research and applied mathematics that drove Lorena to pursue a career in engineering and data science. One part activist, one part Star Wars fanatic, and another part Trekkie, Lorena abides by the motto to “live long and prosper”.

In her talk, Lorena will be speaking on the ethical questions and quandaries that she has grappled with during her career working with data in several different organizations. She will talk about the lessons that she has learned and how she now thinks about her work and the principles that guide it.