Shawna Cokley
About Shawna Cokley
Shawna Cokley is a data scientist with expertise in machine learning and analytics, focusing on higher education. She has developed predictive models for student enrollment and income, and leads the AI Ethics team at Encoura.
Work at Encoura
Shawna Cokley has been employed at Encoura as a Data Scientist since 2020. In this role, she leads the AI Ethics team, which focuses on identifying and discussing sources of bias in production models with stakeholders. Her work involves conducting topic modeling and factor analysis on survey data to segment student respondents, enhancing the understanding of student needs in the college application process. Additionally, she has implemented data quality checks in Python to monitor data drift and changes in operational model predictions, with the results visualized on a Tableau dashboard.
Education and Expertise
Shawna Cokley holds a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Earth Sciences with a concentration in Operational Meteorology from PennWest California. She furthered her education by obtaining two Master of Science (M.S.) degrees: one in Meteorology from the University of Maryland and another in Analytics from North Carolina State University. Her academic background provides a strong foundation for her expertise in data science and machine learning.
Background in Meteorology
Before transitioning to data science, Shawna Cokley worked as a Meteorologist at the NOAA National Weather Service from 2011 to 2017. This six-year tenure equipped her with in-depth knowledge of meteorological data and its applications. Following her time at NOAA, she served as a Graduate Student at the Institute for Advanced Analytics from 2017 to 2018, where she further developed her analytical skills.
Experience at Fidelity Investments
Shawna Cokley worked as a Data Scientist at Fidelity Investments from 2018 to 2020 in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area. During her two years at Fidelity, she applied her data science skills to various projects, contributing to the firm's data-driven decision-making processes.
Machine Learning Projects
Shawna Cokley has developed machine learning models aimed at predicting student college enrollment and post-graduation income. Additionally, she created a custom chatbot for the higher education domain using OpenAI GPT and Langchain, integrating a ChromaDB vector database to utilize existing PDF text libraries. These projects reflect her ability to apply advanced analytical techniques to real-world educational challenges.