AdeptID’s team brings together experts in machine learning and labor market data with former teachers, bootcamp grads, all sharing the goal of getting more people into better jobs, faster.
AdeptID’s team brings together experts in machine learning and labor market data with former teachers, bootcamp grads, all sharing the goal of getting more people into better jobs, faster.
Fernando is a veteran of machine learning ventures whose passion for improving job mobility comes from his own unconventional career transitions. He was the commercial lead and founding team member at TellusLabs, a satellite analytics venture which was acquired by Indigo Ag in 2018. At Indigo, he served as Director, International Strategy. Previously, he drove EMEA expansion for Knewton, an adaptive learning company. He began his career in investment banking at J.P. Morgan covering Financial Institutions. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College.
He’s a member of the Board of Trustees at Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (“BFIT”) in Boston.
Big (6'6") reader... mostly sci-fi and historical fiction.
Brian has led innovative work applying machine learning to particularly challenging real-world applications. Most recently, he worked on quantification of soil carbon for offset products at Indigo Ag. Previously, he implemented data science solutions for private sector clients at Opera Solutions. He holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from Yale and a B.A. from Dartmouth.
A hockey fanatic, his previous founding role was as Co-Founder of the Hopewell Hockey Company.
Dan has spent his career at the intersection of big data, workforce development and advancing educational opportunity. He served as Chief Product and Analytics Officer of Burning Glass Technologies, transforming online job ads into an actionable data source about global demand for jobs and skills. His research has helped to shape the national conversation on careers and the skills gap and has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Wall St Journal and the Economist. He has also worked at Amazon Alexa, Jobs for the Future and as a math teacher at an urban public high school. He holds a BA from Brown University.
He lives in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood with his wife, two daughters and pandemic puppy Penny.
Caroline spent the first 4 years of her career working at a small health tech company. She loved the mission of the company, which focused on an electronic health record system for the behavioral health and mental health space, as well as learning how to debug and modernize a 20-year-old legacy codebase. More recently, Caroline spent 4.5 years working on various teams at Wayfair. She started out on the inventory team; moving logic from SQL functions and stored procedures into .NET apps, decoupling inventory logic from internal warehouse logic, and learning how to work on a system that processes thousands of rows of data a minute and has an aggressive 99.99% uptime. She moonlighted on a team working to implement custom logic for large appliance suppliers, consulting on how to set up inventory logic in a reusable manner before moving over to the supplier side of Wayfair. Caroline architected and implemented multiple systems to automate supplier onboarding; starting with a system to allow internal associates to test sending documents between new suppliers and Wayfair, and ending with a python microservice architecture to set up suppliers' integration settings and connect a modern UI to a legacy database system. Last year, she moved into engineering management and worked to provide her engineering team with individual opportunities to grow as the team worked on a large project to overhaul Wayfair's supplier model and completely automate new supplier onboarding.
Dan began his career as a technical lead/manager while developing new communication systems for the US Navy, US Air Force, and NORAD at Inter-National Research Institute. He next worked as an engineering director at a series of startups and innovative technology companies, including Live Software, Allaire, Macromedia, and Adobe Systems. He led teams developing JRun, Coldfusion, the legendary Flash Player, and Adobe Flex.
Pursuing a latent interest in science, he was the founding engineering leader of the PerkinElmer innovation lab in Kendall Square. Most recently, Dan was the Senior Director of Carbon Sequestration apps at Indigo Ag. He is on the board of two 501(c)3 non-profit organizations and holds a BS in Computer Science from Old Dominion University.
Dan resides in Boston Metrowest with his wife and two children.
Kenyon Allan is a computer scientist devoted to bringing accuracy and quality to products they work on. Previously a student in Mechanical Engineering and now working in both Physics and Computer Science, Kenyon has worked on projects ranging from cybersecurity networking applications to rocketry for NASA competitions. They developed internal testing and quality of life features for employees at Symantec, and worked with flight data and wiring models at Collins Aerospace. They joined AdeptID as part of Northeastern’s amazing Coop program.
When not working on testing or school, they can be found doing runs around Boston or practicing for their amateur Heroes of the Storm team.
Tammi was an engineer by training before finding her passion for design. She worked with Capital One's Innovation Center and Chadwick & Son Orchid in redesigning their customer experience. She conducted research on Spotify users before designing a way to help them understand the platform's algorithm. She's also created a delivery app and a new networking experience for students. She co-founded Liftoff Innovations, which provides affordable consulting to small businesses and startups. She holds a B.S. from VCU and a M.S. in Experience Design from Northeastern.
In her free time, you'll probably find her rock climbing or zooming around on her orange bike.
Rebecca is passionate about education, technology, and the future of work. She previously taught English in Taiwan on a Fulbright Scholarship before returning to the U.S. to teach 3rd grade (over Zoom!) in New York. Teaching during the pandemic made Rebecca curious about the ways technology will influence future learning and workforce development. Her interests led her to the sales team at brightwheel, an early-education software company where she most recently worked. Rebecca holds a B.A. from the University of Southern California.
In her free time, Rebecca enjoys long runs, cooking and baking desserts, and exploring new cities.
Omer has worked on a wide variety of projects involving computer science, engineering, and statistics. He began his career writing software to automate the analysis of biological image data, tracking the machinery inside our cells. He then developed computational and statistical tools to understand how the tiny brain of the fruit fly can perceive the world. Before joining AdeptID, Omer was a neurotechnology engineer building software, electronic and mechanical devices, and microscopes to enable new experimental designs in the field of Neuroscience. He holds a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience from Yale and a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers.
An avid travel photographer, he is also the co-creator of the Filmulator image editor.
Nick is a Software Developer with a passion for technology and a drive to learn and improve. He is currently studying Computer Science at Northeastern University, joining AdeptID as part of their Co-Op Program. He has worked previously on developing websites, such as one that helps Northeastern students plan their class schedules.
In his free time, he can be found soldering, going to concerts, and zooming around on his electric skateboard.
Melissa holds a B.S. in Physics from Boston College. Her undergraduate research was in astronomy and involved using Kepler data to create an unbiased census of Long-Period Variable stars in the Milky Way. After graduating, she worked for a biotech startup where she discovered a passion for software engineering. She took a job as a Software Engineer at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and started her M.S. in Computer Science. At Draper, she worked on projects in the fields of astronomy, quantum computing, and machine learning. After three years at Draper, Melissa founded a direct-to-consumer startup called Smile. Smile was a dating app that used machine learning to match users based on their sense of humor. As the CEO of Smile, Melissa raised a Pre-Seed round and brought the product to market in 4 months with a team of 10 engineers and marketers. The company hit its target of 10K users in Boston in the first 2 months post-launch. The market downturn this year meant shutting down the company with no strategic exit, but Melissa is so excited to bring what she learned to AdeptID. She truly believes in the mission – that AI is the future of job matching, and that we have an opportunity and responsibility to ensure it is done ethically and efficiently.
Kori is a multifaceted engineer. They graduated from Northeastern University, in 2022, with a combined B.S. in Computer Engineering and Computer Science, but their work experience stretches across the food service industry, education, recreation, and technology.
They are particularly passionate about the opportunities that tech can provide for creating a more sustainable and equitable future for all. As a site reliability engineer at AdeptID, their focus is on creating robust, long-lasting systems that make our technology accessible and secure. As an employee at AdeptID, they feel connected to the company's mission after a lifetime of seeing how their mother was impacted by job insecurity and lack of upward mobility for those without a college degree.
Outside of their current role, they enjoy teaching STEM to middle and high school students and sharing their genuine love of learning with others. Most recently, they completed the Generation Teach Summer Teaching Fellowship in Boston, MA.
Born and raised in Arizona, and currently living in Colorado, they love exploring deserts, mountains, and lakes, as well as going on trips to stay connected with friends and family across the globe!
Sam is from the UK and is currently studying for a double major in Computer Science and Physics at Northeastern University in Boston. He joins AdeptID as part of their Coop program. He has worked previously on neural network development for embedded systems and has been developing high performance image classifiers and detectors for these devices.
In his spare time he can be found at the gym or during the summer break months as a caddy at Brookline Country Club. He is a keen sailor and skier.
Omar Zaffar was a family business owner studying Chemistry before he transitioned to Data Science via Lambda school’s training program. Recently, he worked on a complex project using state-of-the-art machine learning libraries and data from the last 50 years of F1 racing to predict whether a driver in F1 would finish in the top 3, top 10 or out of the points (bottom 10). He’s also worked with Family Promise, where he built an API for the intake manager to predict whether a homeless family is likely to come back to the shelter and which areas need the most attention to lead them to a permanent residence.
In his free time, you’ll find him working on his race car or trying something new he hasn’t done before.
As a graduate student at Northeastern University majoring in Computer Science, Yanlin is captivated by designing and developing software. Before this role, her curiosity and interests motivated her to take a couple of career transitions, from Forestry to Human Resource Management and Computer Science. Before joining AdeptID, she interned at companies in different industries, including online retailing, electric vehicles, and social networking.
Born and raised in Beijing, China. She is currently studying in Seattle and working in Boston. She loves to explore new cities and various kinds of food. Sleeping is her favorite thing to do.
Kelly Ryan Bailey is an entrepreneur, speaker, advisor, investor, and mama of three. Her almost 20 year professional journey has focused on evangelizing skills as the currency of the labor market and using data and technology to create innovative skills-based hiring and learning solutions for individuals, companies, educators, governments, and initiatives.
Beyond her role as Head of Growth + Marketing at AdeptID, she is also the founder & CEO of Skills Baby, the home of her podcasts 'Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby', and Got Skills?. Kelly also holds an advisory role with The Adecco Group’s Innovation Foundation, is the Chief Innovation Officer of both World in 2050 and Diplomatic Courier, a Fellow at Salzburg Global Seminar, a Founding Partner of Equity Cities, and also co-owns a number of other companies, including: Growth Network Podcasts, FOS Capital, and World in 2050.
I’ve dedicated my career to sourcing, investing, and scaling high growth early stage businesses led by exceptional founders across the country, many of whom do not fit the traditional tech founder mold. Not enough founders are getting a fair shot – they’re not receiving the best resources, mentorship, and capital. Far too much innovation and genius are going untapped. Small businesses are getting left behind, which is critical to the infrastructure of our US and global economy.
Zeal is on a path towards democratizing venture capital and entrepreneurship with our Inclusive Investing™ strategy. Together with our team and dedicated limited partners, we are rethinking how we support entrepreneurs today and long term so that they too can leverage opportunities to scale.
I’m interested in founders who are humble and have “zeal”( pun intended) – a fire and relentlessness to go the distance. If a founder is not madly in love with their business, I won’t be either. I’m also interested in founders who have deep insight into their market and are solving a “painkiller” problem(s) without compromising their integrity.
I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing first hand, through my previous investments, that there are exceptional founders and businesses everywhere and I believe there’s power in leveraging local assets in all geographies. Over the past decade , founders from secondary markets have become more and more sophisticated, building profitable and sustainable business models with the same rigor as in primary markets. We are beginning to see more cities known for sector-specific innovations, and many are partnering with universities and large corporations to develop transformational ideas that have economic and social returns. Investing in companies in lower cost cities allows dollars to go much further than investments in traditional financial and tech ecosystems such as SF , Boston, and NYC.
Given the fast-changing demands of the labor market, more skills are required in order for people to have a competitive advantage that offers economic mobility. Some form of postsecondary education, credentialing or ability to re/up-skill is pivotal in unlocking higher earning potential in the modern economy. And, to capitalize on new and evolving career opportunities, people need access to financial services and an understanding of financial management. We are excited to partner with founders who are developing important tools and resources across the Future of Work and Financial Technology sectors. These innovative solutions allow people and small businesses to reach their full potential. Wealth and skills go hand-in-hand.
Our team hustles like the entrepreneurs we seek to back. We bring a combination of high-IQ and low-ego. Everyone is genuinely motivated to help founders and companies maximize their potential. We come from diverse backgrounds and have different operating expertise, which makes our collective advice all the more thoughtful and practical.
“I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap.” - Ani DiFranco
I find so much joy in running. Running introduces me to my worst enemy. I have an obsessive goal to run 51 full marathons — one in each state and Washington, DC. I’ve completed 18 full marathons to date. I also find myself unwinding by playing pickup basketball, anything Larry David, and more recently, perfecting my DJ skills. DJing is a newfound passion that allows me to share my music artistry with our community, which I love to do on weekends at a local vinyl shop in Washington, DC. Specifically, I love house music!
Incognito - 1995 Atlanta Tabernacle
Lyndsey is passionate about the role companies can play in catalyzing significant and scalable positive change in the world. She has 12 years of experience in finance with UBS in Switzerland, Hong Kong and the US where she held numerous leadership roles across investment products and services, business development and corporate strategy. She also helped launch ‘UBS and Society’, an initiative bringing together the bank’s sustainable investing and social impact offerings, and led a global program sourcing financial solutions to support the Sustainable Development Goals. She has spent the last decade advising social enterprises in Asia, Africa and the US and is passionate about connecting early stage entrepreneurs with the resources and capital to succeed and scale. She has a Masters in Management from Stanford Graduate School of Business and now lives in Oakland, CA. An avid adventurer and music lover, she is often off exploring the outdoors of Northern California or seeking out live bands in dive bars and unique venues.
Dr. Kathleen A. Creel is the Embedded EthiCS fellow at Stanford University based in the Center for Ethics in Society (EiS) and the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI).Her current research explores the moral, political, and epistemic implications of machine learning as it is used in non-state automated decision making and in science. Dr. Creel has other ongoing projects on early modern philosophy and general philosophy of science.
Dr. Creel’s work broadly concerns philosophy of machine learning, ethics of AI, and general philosophy of science. Her main interests include examining such topics as how humans can best use computation to understand themselves and their world, how can we gain scientific understanding with opaque, black-box computational methods, and what ways of explaining machine learning best serve scientific and public life. In answering these sorts of questions, Dr. Creel connects traditional topics in philosophy of science such as explanation, reference, and natural kinds with a practice-based approach to the study of methods in contemporary machine learning. By examining these epistemic and normative questions, she outlines more fruitful uses of machine learning for human flourishing.
Dr. Creel holds a PhD in History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, MA in Philosophy at Simon Fraser University, and BA in Computer Science & Philosophy at Williams College. She’s also worked with MIT’s prestigious Lincoln Laboratory as a software engineer.
Joseph Fuller is a Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School, the co-director of the school’s long-term project, Managing the Future of Work, and a co-head of the Harvard Project on the Workforce. He is a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and studies issues related to employment and income polarization and the relationship between talent and economic competitiveness. Specifically, he has focused on the ‘skills gap’ and opportunities to expand work-based learning programs, such as apprenticeships. His research on the workings of the “care economy” in the United States focuses on the impact that episodic and predictable caregiving obligations have on workers, their career paths and the implications for employers. His 2021 study, Hidden Workers, Untapped Talent, explores how the processes companies use to attract and evaluate job candidates contributes to the growing labor shortage in the developed world, while ongoing research focuses on the future of work more broadly, specifically the growth of non-traditional employment relationships, the impact of caregiving obligations on the workforce and employee productivity, the best practices of American community colleges in working with employers and strategies for lifting workers out of low paying jobs.
Prior to joining the Harvard Business School faculty, Joe was a co-founder and long-time CEO of Monitor Group, the global consultancy now called Monitor-Deloitte. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School and a director of PVH Corporation, Aera Technology and a trustee of Western Governors University.
Spencer is the Founder & CEO of Prelude. Prior to Prelude, Spencer founded Sokanu, the Internet’s largest career advancement platform. Sokanu serves over 10m people a year, has had ~1B questions answered through the platform and developed the most advanced career matching platform algorithm. Spencer led Sokanu to a successful acquisition by Two Sigma Impact & Baypine in early 2021. Spencer also serves as an advisor to several companies and investment funds in the impact and workforce development space. Spencer partially completed a BSc in Economics from the University of London before stopping out to found Sokanu.