Kathy Qian

Entrepreneurship

I'm excited about building a better world through data and innovation. Currently, I’m creating analytical and operational tools for electoral integrity and quantitative finance.

Co-Founder

Code for Democracy is a civic technology lab focused on detecting and countering malicious information campaigns. Our mission is to defend the integrity of our democratic processes by harnessing the latest advancements in distributed computing and machine learning. We are a non-partisan, values-based organization driven by our dedication to transparency, accountability, and fact-based policy.

Founder

Tickermachine is a proprietary algorithmic trading firm specializing in cryptocurrencies, forex, and ETFs. We use low-frequency long-only strategies based on technical analysis and behavioral economics principles.

Data Science for Good

From fighting for civil liberties to working with the largest impact investor in the world, I believe in expanding opportunities for all people, regardless of who or where they happened to be born.

Data Scientist & Policing Reform Expert

The ACLU engages in litigation to defend the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. I supported the econometrics expert for Collins v. Milwaukee, a Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment case challenging the stop-and-frisk practices of the city’s police department, in sifting through the city’s data, creating statistical models, designing data-driven reforms, and managing the economic consulting firm. Our 119-page report was crucial in negotiating the resulting $3.4M settlement and 5-year consent decree. As part of the agreement, Milwaukee will move towards evidence-based and bias-free policing with the help of an independent monitor.

Data Scientist & Innovation Policy Consultant

The World Bank seeks to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity by committing $50B+ in loans, grants, equity investments, and guarantees to developing countries every year. I led a team of data scientists in the Innovation Labs and the FCI, T&C, and ICT global practices tackling a $400M+ multi-region policy portfolio aimed at cultivating communities of entrepreneurs and creating sustainable growth through innovation. We built analytical and policy frameworks, architected open-source collection processes, created interactive surveys, developed data engineering solutions, and designed visualizations for publication. Our approach utilized geospatial and multi-entity dynamic graph data and combined techniques from natural language processing, network analysis, and computational social science in order to inform $150M+ in operational components.

Strategy Consulting

I started my career at a late-stage startup backed by Accel-KKR and Goldman Sachs. We sought to disrupt the traditional strategy consulting business model by productizing engagements through software-as-a-service tools.

Business Consultant

APT is a predictive analytics company that works with Fortune 1000 companies to design and analyze employee, transaction, customer, and store-level initiatives by combining the best of experimental economics, enterprise software, and strategy consulting. I worked with 11 organizations across 6+ industries, generating $100M+ in insights. I also co-led Penn recruiting and chaired the company-wide roundtable for consultants. APT was acquired by MasterCard for $600M in 2015.

Education

University of Pennsylvania