SWB Executive Committee
David Whitford
Engagement Director
Executive Committee
David Whitford was formerly with the U.S. Census Bureau and led the division of statisticians responsible for statistical aspects of the Decennial Censuses and the monthly American Community Survey. He currently provides consultation on survey methodology to developing countries, governments, and NGOs. His interests are dual system estimation, record linkage, R, tennis, and travel.
Davina Durgana
Chair
Executive Committee
Davina P. Durgana, PhD is an award-winning international human rights statistician who has developed leading global models to assess risk and vulnerability to modern slavery. Dr. Durgana is a Report Co-Author and Senior Statistician on the Global Slavery Index of the Minderoo Foundation’s Walk Free Initiative. She is the American Statistical Association's 2016 Statistical Advocate of the Year and a Forbes Top 30 Under 30 in Science for 2017 for her work on statistical modeling, human security theory, and human trafficking. Dr. Durgana has also recently been announced as an inaugural IF/THEN Ambassador working to encourage women to pursue STEM fields with the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Gary Shapiro
Co-Founder, New Client Acquisition Co-Chair
Executive Committee
Gary Shapiro is retired from Westat, where he was Senior Statistician from 1996 to 2009. Gary was the lead statistician, senior statistician, or/and task leader on over 30 projects, mostly involving survey sample design, weighting, and variance estimation. Prior to being at Westat, Gary was a Senior Statistician at Abt Associates from 1993 to 1996, where he was the lead statistician for a number of surveys. From 1965 to 1993 Gary was at the U.S. Census Bureau. For almost 20 years of this period, he was an Assistant Chief of the Demographic Statistical Methods Division, where he oversaw the operation of up to five branches with the responsibility for sample design, weighting, and variance estimation for the demographic surveys. He is a co-founder of Statistics Without Borders, together with Steve Pierson and Fritz Scheuren. He served as initial SWB Co-Chair and then as Chair from 2010 to 2012.
Jae Brodsky
Secretary & Treasurer
Executive Committee
Jae Brodsky works in statistical genetics on problems in machine learning, big data analysis, and Bayesian techniques. She has a Ph.D. in statistics from UCLA and previously worked at the FDA.
Jean Opsomer
Past Chair
Executive Committee
Jean Opsomer is Professor and Chair in the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University. His main areas of statistical expertise are survey statistics and nonparametric methods. He is delighted to be able to assist SWB as it continues to expand its operations and develops a more effective organizational structure.
Matt Brems
Vice Chair
Executive Committee
Matt Brems is Senior Manager, Data Science Product & Strategy with DataRobot and is Managing Partner at BetaVector, a data science consultancy. His full-time professional data work spans computer vision, finance, education, consumer-packaged goods, and politics and he earned General Assembly's 2019 "Distinguished Faculty Member of the Year" award. Matt earned his Master's degree in statistics from Ohio State. Matt is passionate about mentoring folx in data and tech careers. Matt currently serves on the Statistics Without Borders Executive Committee as Vice Chair.