Michael Charles & Michael Zhao

Teaches at NYC Data Science Academy

Michael Charles

I got my master degree in statistics and economics in 2004 from a renowned French school. Since then, I have worked in different industries as a statistician and a data scientist. I started my career in France in the media industry at Mediametrie and after a few years joined a major French banking group, Credit Agricole S.A. After moving to San Francisco, CA, I worked at Bank of the West Risk Management for five years. My last role was in the airline industry in Sydney, Australia where I managed the modeling and insight team within Virgin Australia frequent flyer program.

I love to discover and mine into big and messy data from diverse sources to make sense of them, discover and unlock meaningful insights for the businesses and other stakeholders. When relevant, I have developed and implemented machine learning models that helped drive the business, enhance customer experience and automate decision making. I also enjoy data visualization and always try to deliver and communicate results and tools in the most appropriate way for diverse audiences.

More recently I have been managing teams of analysts and data scientists, and I love supporting and training team members to grow their technical skills along with coaching them to reach their career goals.

Michael Zhao

I am getting my Ph.D. at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Spring 2019. As an aspiring computational social scientist, I take advantage of modern computational tools to discover novel insights from big, messy data, with a focus on answering causal questions. My current research looks at estimating the value that social media creates for online content producers. Prior to my starting my Ph.D., I completed my master's degree in Economics at NYU.