Data scientist, developer, and consultant Carmem Domingues educates the public about technology through her writing, her YouTube channel, and her Instagram account.

“Technology is everywhere in our lives,” said Domingues, who is founder and chief executive officer of Datavima, a New York City-based tech consultancy. “For us as a society to decide where and how to use these tools, we need a basic technical literacy so we can make informed decisions.”

Domingues was part of Columbia University’s first M.S. in Data Science cohort. She came into the program with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard University and five years of professional experience, including work in technology and finance with Goldman Sachs, international development with the World Bank, political campaign strategy and marketing in Brazil, and targeted advertising and customer segmentation for technology startups. 

She pursued her master’s degree part-time while working for Oliver Wyman Labs and focusing on the development and implementation of a range of technology and data science solutions. The role honed her relationship management skills and she led teams of designers, engineers, and subject-matter experts in finance, railroads, and retail. “I worked on all the challenges that go beyond Excel, such as problems that involve big data, more sophisticated algorithms, business logic and machine learning, data visualizations, web applications, dashboards,” she said.

After graduating from Columbia in 2018, Domingues worked for Enigma as a product manager to help companies comply with customer data regulations. She also created full-service data science solutions for clients through Datavima. “Sometimes [clients] have data, but don’t know how to leverage it, how to extract it, visualize it, gain insights from it. Sometimes there’s a business problem they are trying to solve, and we need to determine how to use their data to address the problem. Sometimes they are looking for technical solutions to improve their processes.”

Domingues is an advisor to Brazil’s National School of Public Administration and actively engages in conversations around how emerging technologies should—or shouldn’t—be used in public administration. She contributes to sustainability, infrastructure, socioeconomic progress, and institutional agility policy proposals.

An inclination to leverage data science and programming for real-life applications led Domingues to launch a YouTube channel in June 2021. She shares data science concepts in digestible formats for those without technical backgrounds, and the content is available in Portuguese and English. “[Artificial intelligence] is everywhere, and most of the population doesn’t understand it, isn’t familiar with it. As a data scientist, I feel it is my duty to help.”

— Karina Alexanyan, Ph.D.