Hilary Mason is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and

data scientist Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a bro ...

. She is the co-founder of the

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

Fast Forward Labs.

Early life and education

Mason was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, and graduated from

Grinnell College Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1846 when a group of New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College. Grinnell has the fifth highest endowment-to-st ...

with a B.A. in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

in 2000, and attended

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

Career

In 2010, she co-founded

HackNY hackNY is a New York City-based initiative seeking "to create and empower a community of student-technologists." hackNY was created in 2010 by Evan Korth, Hilary Mason, and Chris Wiggins. The organization is organized by faculty at both New York ...

, a non-profit that helps integrate engineering students into the startup community in New York City. After few years working as Chief

Scientist A scientist is a person who conducts Scientific method, scientific research to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, ...

bitly Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, and ...

, she quits the company in 2014 and co-founds Fast Forward Labs with Micha Gorelick, an other former bitly data scientist. She continues working as a data scientist at Accel. On September 7, 2017,

Cloudera Cloudera, Inc. is an American software company providing enterprise data management systems that make significant use of Apache Hadoop. As of January 31, 2021, the company had approximately 1,800 customers. History Cloudera, Inc. was formed on J ...

announced that it had acquired Fast Forward Labs, and that Mason would become Cloudera's Vice President of Research. She has been interviewed by

TechRepublic TechRepublic is an online trade publication and social community for IT professionals, providing advice on best practices and tools for the needs of IT decision-makers. It was founded in 1997 in Louisville, Kentucky, by Tom Cottingham and Kim Sp ...

, ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

'', ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'',

ProgrammableWeb ProgrammableWeb is an information and news source about the Web as a programmable platform. It is a subsidiary of MuleSoft and has offices in San Francisco, CA. The website publishes a repository of web APIs, mashups, and applications, and has doc ...

and others. She has further featured in both

Glamour (magazine) ''Glamour'' is today an online women's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. For many years a traditional hard-copy magazine, it was founded in 1939 and first published in April 1939 in the United States. It was originally called ' ...

and

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

She has also been a member of Mayor Bloomberg's Technology and Innovation Advisory Council. In addition, Mason is a prominent member of NYCResistor, a hacker collective located in Brooklyn.

Fast Forward Labs

Fast Forward Labs specializes in machine learning intelligence research. Mason is the CEO of the Fast Forward Labs until the acquisition, on September 7, 2017 by

, a US open-source software company that offers support, training and software to business clients.

extended this offer due to FFL's experience and expertise in applying machine learning to practical business problems and their commitment to continual academic and industrial research surveys on new techniques. Mason explained that the merger of FFL with

would enable further and accelerated research opportunities on a larger platform.

Awards

Mason received the TechFellows Engineering Leadership award in 2012 worth $100,000. She was also on the

Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...

40 under 40 ''Fortune'' magazine's 40 Under 40 is a list of individuals the publication considers to be the most influential young leaders for the year. The list has existed in two phases: First, from 1999 to 2003, the list was presented purely as a numeric ...

Ones to Watch list in 2011, as well as Crain's New York 40 under Forty list. She was named within the Top 100 most creative people in business by ''Fast Company''.

References

External links

*
cloudera.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mason, Hilary American business executives Information systems researchers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Grinnell College alumni Brown University alumni People from New York City Johnson & Wales University faculty Data scientists Women data scientists