about
Hi, I'm Michelle.
Moab ⟷ Maine
"Jack of all trades, master of none, is sometimes better than a master of one."
Data
Moved into data science during COVID, just before ChatGPT came out (lol): underwriting, fraud detection, churn models. Now Machine Learning platform engineering, a master's at Georgia Tech, and BizziB AI.
Circus
I direct a circus arts show and mentor new performers. Before data, six years teaching yoga and acroyoga, performing aerial silks and hoop, highlining, and guiding climbing and canyoneering, in 25 countries.
Feminism
A map of where women and men come out unequal (in both directions), a step counter audit that started from Invisible Women, a shop for women in STEAM, and a circus whose name takes back a word once used to dismiss women.
Physics
Engineering physics at Colorado School of Mines, thin-film solar research at NREL, and a TIG-welded aluminum vacuum chamber I'm still extremely proud of.
What I care about
The Social Dilemma helped me decide to go into data science. Weapons of Math Destruction, which I read after, told me what to work on: algorithms that quietly treat people unfairly, and building the kind that doesn't. Health and human movement, climate and energy, criminal justice, and civil liberties are the areas that pull me.
I use AI where I struggle: focus, follow-through, and the repetitive work a computer should be doing anyway. The point is more time to be a human, not to work more like a machine. The human layer, at the start and on top of any AI system, is the part that matters most.
Outside of work
I live with my husband Eric, a designer, builder and general contractor with a bachelor's and a master's in architecture from SCAD (EHAS Design), our dog Willow, and two tuxedo kittens named Bow and Tie. I paddle board, do partner acrobatics, aerial arts, yoga, and strength and conditioning, watch a lot of movies, and go outside whenever I can. I thrift, swap clothes with friends, and I'm just good enough on a sewing machine to be dangerous.