About

Will Haffner is an accomplished Data Scientist and People Analytics professional with more than 15 years of relevant experience. He is currently serving as a People Data Science expert at Blend, a leading digital lending platform in the US. Will has a proven track record of designing, building, and shipping data-driven products that help leaders solve real business problems and make more effective decisions about people over the entire employee lifecycle. In his previous role at Bridgewater Associates, Will served as a Data Scientist and Senior Researcher in People Analytics. During his tenure, he worked closely with advanced founder/CIO Ray Dalio and played a key role in developing and implementing the firm's people analytics vision. Will's work informed firm-level decisions, including changing Bridgewater's psychometric tests and launching an internal HR software product that synthesizes structured meeting feedback. Will has extensive applied statistical experience in research settings, including three years reporting to Dave Ferrucci, creator of IBM Watson. He also has substantial experience applying statistical and ML techniques to deliver solutions to real-world problems. His skills include experiment design, measurement design, statistics, supervised and unsupervised machine learning, nonparametric model interpretation, factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and data visualization. Will holds a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago. He is a highly skilled Data Scientist with expertise in Python, ML, and Research Science. He has also worked as an Advisor at Catylex, a startup company that helps people with chronic pain. Will is a results-driven professional who is passionate about using data science to solve complex business problems.