External Event June 2, 2022 by Nahla Salem, Fouad Yousif, Alexander Martinez and Brittany Jones

About this event

To stay viable and thrive in rapidly changing environments, businesses need to be proactive at anticipating what’s next and respond quickly to challenges that come their way. In this event, we’ll hear three lightning talks on how data impacts the creation and evolution of Yelp products for businesses and consumers. We’ll also hear from the Yelp TechTalent recruiting team on engineering and product job openings and the interview processes at Yelp.

Meet the Speakers:

Nahla Salem is a Senior Product Manager and specializes in product managing B2B Machine Learning products. She leads a team in Yelp using ML to help acquire, engage, and retain Yelp's Local Biz owners. Before Yelp, Nahla built end-to-end ML products in multiple growth-stage Toronto start-ups where she also built ML and Product teams. Customers she worked with include Fortune-50 Manufacturing conglomerate, United Technologies, and the world’s largest health and beauty Retail group A.S. Watson. Her background includes software development and consulting. She has a Masters of Business Analytics and an EMBA.

Fouad Yousif is a Data Scientist who joined Yelp’s MultiLoc Data Science team in January 2021. The team supports Mloc Product and Sales stakeholders with evidence for strategic decision-making impacting Yelp's largest mid-market and enterprise clients. During his time at Yelp, Fouad has led multiple projects in the attribution and ad product space, worked in experimentation, and has been actively involved in leading multiple Yelp initiatives such as Data Science Learning Group and the release of Yelp’s Academic Dataset. Prior to Yelp, Fouad has over 12 years of data science experience in banking and healthcare. Fouad is an active member in Toronto’s data science community. In 2018, he founded The Coding Hive, a Toronto based training program that offers high school students and professionals a series of Artificial Intelligence workshops and has been an active instructor since then.

Alexander Martinez is a Software Engineer who joined Yelp’s Data Infrastructure Organization two and a half years ago originally as a member of the stream processing team, and later became a member of the DRE-SQL team in July 2020. During his time at Yelp, Alexander has been both a project lead and member on various initiatives including: upgrading a MySQL major version, deploying and integrating Vitess, and creating automation and monitoring for various related technologies. Prior to Yelp, he studied mathematics at the University of British Columbia and worked on researching and developing computer vision and machine learning infrastructure while working at a startup in Vancouver, BC. When he’s not behind a monitor, Alexander can be found exploring as much of New York City as possible since his recent move to the city in October 2021.

TechTalent Recruiting Team :

Brittany Jones is a technical recruiter at Yelp supporting the Engineering organization. With over five years of experience in full lifecycle recruiting, she is passionate about building strong relationships with hiring managers and candidates, creating ways to refine processes, and organizing events that help cultivate diversity and inclusion in the workplace. In both her role as a recruiter and as a member of the employee resource group ColorCoded, Brittany is committed to growing diversity within Yelp and providing a place for people to gather and learn about the stories of underrepresented communities.