Meet Kekona
Kekona Sorenson is a statistician by training, an AI/Product data scientist by trade, and an educator and coach by calling. When he isn't writing code, he's building things out of wood, cooking without recipes, or mowing the lawn on Saturday mornings. During the 2020 lockdown, while everyone else was binge-watching Tiger King, he worked through all 41 seasons of This Old House. A Los Angeles native, he now calls Kirkland home.
- Years in data science
- 20+
- Years managing data science teams
- 5+
- Youth sports teams coached
- 25+
- UCLA statistics students taught
- 931
- Tree house, built with nothing but lumber and a dream
- 1
Where I've been
- Now
A planned break after a decade at Microsoft: building apps that are fun and solve my own problems, coaching my kids' teams, and taking on consulting and advisory work in measurement, experimentation, and AI evaluation.
- 2016
Microsoft
Principal Data Scientist, Manager & Architect
A decade of data science at the scale of hundreds of millions of users.
- 2012
Hot Topic · Torrid · BoxLunch
Director of Data Science & Strategic Planning
Yes… that Hot Topic. Founding data scientist and strategic planning director for the coolest store in the mall.
- 2007
UCLA Department of Statistics
PhD Researcher, Consultant & Lecturer
Researcher, consultant, and teacher, often in the same afternoon.
Research
- My own dissertation work, plus collaborations with researchers in other departments on theirs.
Consulting
- On-the-fly statistics problem solver for the broader university and business community.
Teaching
- 4 years. 931 students. 10 different statistics and probability courses, undergrad and grad. TA of the Year, 2010.
- 2005
Welch Consulting
Associate Economist
Labor economics in the real world.
- 2004
Gumbiner, Savett, Finkle, Fingleson and Rose
Staff Accountant
Audits, tax compliance, and my first adult job.
- Before
The jobs that paid for college
Landscape labor · Tommy Hilfiger Outlet · Event set up crew · Student union building manager
Mowing, folding, hauling, and locking up.
Education
UCLA, a Bruin three times over
- Ph.D. candidate (C.Phil) in Statistics
- M.S. in Statistics
- B.S. in Mathematics/Applied Science & B.A. in Economics