Meet A Data Scientist: Dr. Aria Fredman
Data Circles is excited to present the next entry in our new series, “Meet A Data Scientist!”
“Meet a Data Scientist” is dedicated to recognizing the amazing women powering the Puget Sound area’s data science community, spotlighting their journey into the field, their incredible accomplishments, and the weighty challenges that they faced along the way. This lies at the heart of Data Circles’ mission of inspiring women to enter the data science field by showcasing its many incredible role models.
Do you know any marvelous women in data science? Send us a tip here!
Dr. Aria Fredman's story is one of resilience and perseverance. Formerly a Senior Data Scientist at Gideon Health, she talks about transitioning into the field from a non-STEM background, creating a strong LinkedIn presence, and taking care of her mental health.
Dr. Fredman completed her doctorate degree in Social Psychology at the University of Austin, where towards the end of her degree, she realized that a career in academia was incongruous with her career goals. Like many who have transitioned into data science from academia, she noticed that data science roles were burgeoning and provided another pathway for a successful career. Also, with a career in data science, she could provide a stable life for her children despite being a single parent.
Soon after graduate school, Dr. Fredman enrolled in the Insight Fellows program. The Insight program helped Dr. Fredman in many ways (check out our feature on Dr. April Harry, another Insight scholar and data scientist in the Puget Sound area) such as improving her skills in Python and natural language processing, which augmented her already extensive graduate school experience in quantitative methods and data analysis in R. These skills synergized in her final project at the program where she combined her passion for and training in psychology with data science to build a data product that identified depression in tweets on Twitter.
“In addition to finding and affiliating yourself with groups that make you feel like you belong, for example woman- or religious- affinity groups, seeking out professional mental health services is always an excellent idea.”
After Insight, Dr. Fredman secured her first role in the field as a Research and Development Data Scientist at iSpot.tv. It was ideal given that it was a remote role, allowing her the flexibility that she needed to travel with and be available for her family. Additionally, she came to be very fond of the community at iSpot.tv, in small part because her colleagues were also Insight Fellows like her.
More importantly, iSpot.tv’s appeal to Dr. Fredman was in the environment it fostered, where she was surrounded by role models, including a boss that ensured equality in the workplace, and an inclusive team culture that welcomed all questions and conversations. This made it easier to speak to her teammates about imposter syndrome--many of whom felt the same way, and is an issue that disproportionately affects women in the workplace--helping her relieve its stresses and ultimately move past it. The team at iSpot.tv was gender-balanced and diverse, which made her feel welcome.
“The most important tool in a data scientist’s kit is critical thinking. Learning how to build an ML model is probably much easier than learning to be wary that you might be passing onto it your implicit biases. Always be wary of hidden biases/data leakage in your data and models, and remember that your job is never to build an accurate model (which is impossible), but rather one that is useful. My goal has always been to be useful.”
Dr. Fredman eventually moved on from iSpot.tv to Gideon Health after a LinkedIn connection noticed her experience in psychology, UX research and data science. This encounter appears serendipitous but it was a result of carefully establishing a strong network on LinkedIn and actively posting about her work in data science, diversity, and other issues close to her heart. Motivated by her success on LinkedIn, she encourages data scientists to work on their LinkedIn presence and brand. At Gideon Health, Dr. Fredman enjoyed working on data science and UX experiments and also affecting diversity and inclusion initiatives, something she is passionate about. Unfortunately, she, along with several colleagues, was recently made redundant at Gideon Health. Despite this, she remains optimistic and takes this as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Over the course of Dr. Fredman's journey in data science, she has come to appreciate several pearls of wisdom that have helped her and that in sharing, will likely help others in their search for data science roles. First, she advises that everyone identify sources of internal and external motivation that will help them to move forward in the face of rejection. Second, she encourages candidates to view job descriptions as dating profiles, so that it not only lessens the pressure, but also encourages a critical eye toward what is advertised in the descriptions. Oftentimes, job descriptions are far from the truth, and some of the aspirational qualifications listed discourage women candidates from applying since women tend to apply for jobs only when they meet 100% of the criteria. Dr. Fredman also encourages candidates to ask potential employers many questions about the role to get a true sense of its nature, rather than relying solely on what is written in a job description. Finally, she urges everyone to work in an area of data science that they are passionate about rather than chasing after the hottest trends in the field.