rstudio::global(2021) Diversity Scholarships

Julia Silge is a data scientist and software engineer at RStudio PBC where she works on open source tools for machine learning and MLOps. She holds a PhD in astrophysics and has worked as a data scientist in tech and the nonprofit sector, as well as a technical advisory committee member for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. She is a coauthor of Tidy Text Mining with R, Supervised Machine Learning for Text Analysis in R, and Tidy Modeling with R. An international keynote speaker and a real-world practitioner focusing on data analysis and machine learning, Julia loves text analysis, making beautiful charts, and communicating about technical topics with diverse audiences.

Jen Hecht is the VP of People Operations at RStudio. She was first introduced to R in 2013, as a non-programmer seeking better ways to manage analytical projects - a quest which was aided both by the RStudio toolchain and the welcoming support of R Ladies, R meetup groups, and other wonderful open resources. Ever since, she has been captivated by open data science tools and the communities that build them. Before joining RStudio in 2018, Jen held HR and People Analytics roles in a variety of industries, including financial services, biotech, and used record shops. Outside of work, Jen loves books and music of all kinds, and is a novice fly caster.