William Zhu

Data Scientist

Washington, DC, United States5 yrs 2 mos experience

Most Likely To SwitchAI ML Practitioner

Key Highlights

Improved marketing campaign click-through rates by 70%.
Designed AI solutions that automated manual processes.
Co-authored impactful research articles and evaluation reports.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Data Science and AI Strategy expert in the SaaS industry.

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Skills

Core Skills

Data ScienceAi StrategyMachine LearningData AnalysisResearch

Other Skills

Amazon SagemakerPostgreSQLRetrieval-Augmented GenerationClaude CodeAWS BedrockSQLPython (Programming Language)PythonStatistical Data AnalysisRStudioGame DesignCrewAIMulti-agent SystemsLarge Language Models (LLM)Agile Methodologies

About

Hi, I'm William. Beyond my technical role, I find joy in listening to non-fiction audiobooks & podcasts (Acquired, Lenny, Dwarkesh) and sharing my reflections through the following channels: 1. Monthly in-person AI Discussion Club in downtown DC (luma.com/ai-discussion-club) 2. Write inspiring short stories about innovators, builders, and risk-takers via weekly LinkedIn Posts. 3. Bi-monthly in-person Ted-talk discussion events at Bethesda Growth Mindset Salon (www.meetup.com/bethesda-growth-mindset-salon). Here is a list of my all-time favorite books (williamzhu.ai/webpages/books), curated from 800+ books that I've completed over the years. These books have had a profound impact on my lifestyle, worldview, and business philosophy. Hope you find them valuable as well. Enjoy!

Experience

5 yrs 2 mos

Total Experience

2 yrs 7 mos

Average Tenure

4 yrs 3 mos

Current Experience

Choice hotels international

2 roles

Senior Data Scientist - Applied AI

Promoted

Mar 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 2 mos · On-site

Personalized Marketing & AI**
Improved click-through rate by 70% in destination marketing campaigns by building a personalized destination recommendation model
Improving loyalty member retention by designing and automating processes to identify guest "travel passion points," enabling highly personalized email marketing campaigns
AI Vibe Building & Automation**
Automated ~X weekly manual hours and improved matching efficiency by 7x by designing and deploying a Group Account Attribution AI solution in production (Retrieval Augmented Generation, Claude Sonnet 4.5, FAISS vector database, embedding models on AWS Bedrock, Pydantic)
Built travel vacation guides and World Cup fan road trip websites using Claude Code, demonstrating rapid AI-assisted prototyping
Training & Leadership**
Designed and conducted Microsoft Copilot live demo training workshops for 200+ people managers and 400+ Choice associates
Promoted a "growth mindset" culture by hosting quarterly book discussions and networking events as co-chair of the Young Professional Alliance (YPA) resource group
Selected as 2025 Choice Innovation Award Finalist (top 5 out of ~1,800 associates)

Amazon SagemakerPostgreSQLRetrieval-Augmented GenerationClaude CodeAWS BedrockData Science+1

Data Scientist

Feb 2022 – Mar 2024 · 2 yrs 1 mo · On-site

Enhanced points redemption fraud detection efficiency by X% by building, deploying, and automating ML models
Increased the loyalty team’s ability to identify decelerating high-value guests by X% by building customer lifetime value model
Supported the cobrand credit card launch by developing bias detection and correction capabilities for guest propensity model
Delivered insights to the leadership team on Choice guest retention cohort analysis, Choice and Radisson loyalty member overlap, Cobrand Credit Card Holder profiles and usage behaviors, and drivers of guest survey LTR scores
Selected as 2023 Choice MVP award Finalist (Top 5 finalists out of ~1800 associates) and completed Emerging Leadership Program

SQLPython (Programming Language)Data ScienceMachine Learning

Realeats

2 roles

Data Analytics Consultant

Sep 2021 – Dec 2021 · 3 mos

Contributed to analytics insight that led to $16 million Series A funding by designing Python code that automates monthly customer retention reports for CEO, CFO, investors, and board of directors
Built dashboards that track promo code acquisition and retention performance, which results in 6 hours of CMO and Director of Marketing’s time saving every week

SQLPython (Programming Language)Data AnalysisData Science

Data Science Summer Intern

Jun 2021 – Sep 2021 · 3 mos

Improved 2-month customer lifetime value (LTV) by 7% by identifying and implementing promo codes associated with high Average Order Value (AOV) and low churn rate
Solidified brand positioning strategy for the CMO by identifying top customers persona using logistic regressions and decision trees; compiled customer database by merging sales records, Google Analytics API, U.S. Census, gender-guesser Python package, and Zillow home value index
Delivered 8 presentations in front of the CEO, CFO, CMO, and VP of Operations; attended weekly strategic meetings

Westat - improving lives through research

Research Assistant

Jul 2019 – Jun 2020 · 11 mos · Rockville, MD · On-site

Contributed to 8 program evaluation projects by performing data analysis and report writings for clients including U.S. Department of Education, Verizon, and National Science Foundation
Co-authored an article titled “Using state datasets and meta-analysis of low-powered studies to evaluate a school-based dropout prevention program for students with disabilities” in Studies in Educational Evaluation
Co-authored an evaluation report for Racial Equity Action Leadership (REAL) Program to show that the program is effective at guiding 30+ participants to craft racial equity plan for their companies via survey data analysis

Statistical Data AnalysisRStudioResearchData Analysis