Hilary Mason

Hilary Mason is Data Scientist in Residence at Accel Part­ners, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm. From 2009 to 2013, she served as Chief Scientist for bitly, the popular link-shortening service, where she continues to work as Scientist Emeritus, advising a team that studies attention on the internet in real-time. A genuinely charming speaker who resonates with both tech and nonspecialist audiences, Hilary speaks about the challenges and the rewards of working with big data, with a special focus on machine learning.

Hilary Mason was General Manager of machine learning at Cloudera, Inc. for two years after it acquired Fast Forward Labs in 2017. As CEO and Founder of Fast Forward Labs, Hilary’s work, which synthesized the latest breakthroughs in big data from a wide range of fields, gave her a uniquely broad understanding of the field.

Hilary is the co-founder of HackNY, a non-profit that helps talented engineering students find their way into the startup community of creative technologists in New York City; co-host of DataGotham, an annual event for professionals involved in data science; and member of NYCResistor. She advises a number of companies, including Mortar, knod.es, collective[i], DataKind, Betaspring, and TechStars New York. She also served on Mayor Bloomberg’s Technology and Innovation Advisory Council.

Hilary is on Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Busi­ness 2013 and 1000 Most Creative People in Business 2014. Other honors include the TechFellows Engineering Leadership award, the Fortune 40 under 40 Ones to Watch list and the Crain’s New York Business 40 under Forty.