Within the Statistics & Privacy team, we design solutions and implement them with our engineering colleagues, focused on our ads and commerce business. I help develop our portfolio of projects and serve as a catalyst for team members to accelerate projects and advance their personal goals. Some of my time is also dedicated to leading multi-org initiatives.

Joining Facebook was a fortunate coincidence. I was finishing my penultimate year of grad school, had gotten lucky with some of my research, and hadn’t given thought to any path beyond academia. A manager reached out to one of my advisors, highlighting a PhD internship intended for someone with my sort of background – Bayesian inference, optimal design and analysis of experiments with unrepresentative or mislabeled data, etc. At first I was reluctant, because I didn’t know anyone who worked at Facebook, and I didn't know anyone in my field who chose to work in the tech industry. I took the plunge, flew out to California and got hooked soon thereafter.

The methodological problems we’re trying to solve are really challenging, and it’s fulfilling to help businesses succeed by spending smarter while also incorporating privacy-enhancing tech. I continue to learn so much from my colleagues, who are leaders and experts in their own right. And by helping Facebook build our business, we support the social value efforts many of my colleagues focus on every day around the world.

A big component of my day is working to understand challenges members of my team and partner teams are facing, and brainstorming with them on the best path forward. Some of these challenges are technical in nature, but most are strategic or focus on coordinating our global efforts. Each day I set aside time for my individual contribution efforts. Sometimes that’s coding, but as I’ve gained greater understanding of our business, teams, and technical systems, I also spend time outlining new approaches to solve tough problems.

Creative. Every day we think big and craft viable solutions to bring that vision to life. Without creativity, we’d find ourselves unable to overcome the myriad of technical and scientific challenges. A recent example is developing machine learning algorithms to optimize ads delivery for incremental impact across both online and offline sales, even as offline sales occur days or even weeks after people see ads.

Focus on Impact. There are too many good ideas and interesting projects to pursue, so prioritization is key. Focusing on impact serves as a great guiding principle. Our team’s purpose is to advance common long-term goals with our engineering teams, and driving impact entails building great systems that scale globally.

We have a close bond with one another. Aside from a few strategy board games gone awry, we always look out for one another even though our work often leads us to partner with different engineering teams.