The incredible Jennifer Ives has become a champion for the Real Technologist podcast. She's been introducing me to an Uber broad set of deep technical experts of all different shapes and sizes. Given Jennifer's depth in AI and her new company, Watering Hole AI, it came as no surprise when she introduced me to Dr. Rebecca Bilbro. Dr. Bilbro is the founder and CTO of an AI firm called Rotational Labs. She's also a founder of the popular Open Source library called Yellow Brick that provides visual analysis and diagnostic tools to facilitate machine learning model selection. 

When Rebecca appeared in our Zoom room, I asked her how to pronounce her last name. I was smiling from ear to ear when she said "it's like the Hobbit, but with an R". Yep... she said that and my inner geek cosplay toes curled. 

It was 9:00 AM on the east coast and Rebecca had just finished a morning walk with her mom, a retired professor of computer science. I was about to ask her about the walk when she volunteered that they had been discussing data structures. The computer scientist and the data scientist had complementary points of view though Rebecca adds that she thinks of data from the vantage point of being a data consumer. Her origin story was starting to peak out... she grew up in North Carolina as the eldest daughter of two university professors. 

Rebecca Bilbro: 

My parents were both faculty at North Carolina State University, both in the engineering department, just like real technologists from the very beginning.