2024 Business Analytics Competition

Svetlana Reznik

Svetlana Reznik leads the Data and AI Customer Success team for Microsoft’s Northeast region, with a focus on media, entertainment and professional services. Her team works with organizations to implement data, analytics and AI solutions that modernize operations and empower employees.

Prior to joining Microsoft, she held sales leadership roles at IBM and Amazon Web Services. Svetlana is actively engaged in advancing conversations around artificial intelligence and its impact on business.

Based in New York City, she enjoys skiing, spending time with her family and co-leading the NY/NJ Women’s Employee Resource Group at Microsoft.

Shrimanth Reddy Adla

Shrimanth Reddy Adla is an accomplished business analytics leader with expertise in developing innovative solutions for financial products. Currently serving as Director of Credit Risk Analytics at Comcast, he leads efforts to enhance risk analytics for mobile business and enterprise-wide cross-sell programs. His background includes overseeing multimillion-dollar portfolios at top-tier financial institutions, where he played a pivotal role in developing predictive algorithms that supported business growth while mitigating credit and fraud risks. Shrimanth has also served as a judge on industry panels evaluating international and U.S. business initiatives. His commitment to business excellence establishes him as a respected figure in data analytics-based product management.

Robert Tyler Braun

As an assistant professor, Tyler Braun’s research focuses on the organization of the health care system, with particular interest in changes to the organization and financing of physician practices and providers of end-of-life and long-term care. As principal investigator on several grants from funders such as the National Institute on Aging and Arnold Ventures, his team examines physician and long-term care organization, financing and behavior within the U.S. health delivery system.

Tyler’s research interests include mergers and acquisitions of physician practices, hospices and nursing homes by various types of institutional investment. His work has been published in prominent journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine and Health Affairs. His research has received coverage from major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker, as well as attention from policymakers, including the White House, Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee.

Tyler primarily teaches in the Executive M.B.A./M.S. Healthcare Leadership program, a joint program by Cornell’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management and Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. He also teaches and mentors students in Weill Cornell’s Health Policy and Economics M.S. program and M.D. program.

Mi Guo

Mi Guo is a dynamic data analytics professional with extensive experience in fintech, venture capital, healthcare and gaming. Currently serving as Director of Growth Data at Rocket Money, formerly Truebill, Mi leads analytics projects in close collaboration with Growth Marketing and Data teams. She has previously held roles at Current, CB Insights, Aetna and Mohegan Sun.

Mi holds a Master of Science in Statistics from Baruch College and a Bachelor of Arts in English Studies from Chengdu Institute of Sichuan International Studies University.

Jayant Kumar

Jayant Kumar is an experienced data science professional with expertise in analyzing complex online systems. He has solved problems related to measuring and enhancing the performance of large recommender systems, experimentation for social networks, product analytics, and signal research for measuring and detecting abuse in social networks. His work has helped grow top-line revenue and identify thousands of instances of online fraud. Jayant currently works as a senior data scientist at a social media company.

Jayant has also worked with startups developing custom algorithms for forecasting intermittent demand, adding several basis points to the profit margin for a large perishable food supplier.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from BITS Pilani, India, and a master’s degree in enterprise business analytics from the National University of Singapore.

George Mathew

George Mathew, M.D., M.B.A., FACP, is a clinical expert and healthcare thought leader with experience transforming healthcare marketplaces across payer, provider, life sciences, and federal, state and local government healthcare organizations.

His experience includes consulting, technology development and business development work at GE, Goldman Sachs, WebMD, Pfizer, Medidata Solutions, Aetna/CVS, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services and DXC Technology. Dr. Mathew brings a strong technology innovation focus to his work, having founded a healthcare technology startup earlier in his career. He also advises several healthcare IT startups through the Health 2.0-NYC community.

Nneka Penniston

Nneka Penniston has worked in business analytics for more than 15 years across healthcare, education, financial services and pharmaceuticals. She is currently a data science senior manager at Bristol Myers Squibb, supporting generative AI and large language model-related projects. Prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry, she provided digital engagement support in the financial sector across search, live agents and chatbots.

For the past four years, Nneka has worked as an adjunct faculty member at Columbia University in the M.S. in Applied Analytics program. She received a B.S. in Statistics from Hunter College and an M.S. in Business Analytics from NYU Stern School of Business.

She is also a fashion enthusiast and owns a women’s online clothing store, JP MAROU.

Paul Thompson

Paul Thompson is the vice president of industry strategy for health plans. In this role, he is responsible for the formation and execution of DXC Technology’s Commercial Health Plan segment vision through technology innovation, implementation and strategy execution.

Prior to assuming this role, Paul was the chief revenue officer and industry sales leader for the Health and Life Sciences Group. His focus was on aligning the broad capabilities of DXC Technology to address healthcare industry needs. He also managed strategic partnerships and identified business development opportunities. Paul also served as chief strategy officer for DXC Technology/Hewlett Packard Health and Life Sciences Group.

Before joining DXC Technology, he was vice president of product development for Clinical Cost and Quality Improvement at Cigna, where he was responsible for developing member engagement programs designed to reduce medical costs and improve health outcomes. He also served as a regional director of underwriting for commercial healthcare products in 15 markets across the United States. Previously, Paul spent 14 years at Aetna in leadership roles across healthcare sales and underwriting, investment management, product development, internal audit and investigation.

He graduated from Fairfield University with a B.A. in economics and from the University of Connecticut with an M.B.A. in marketing and finance. He is a member of the Board of Advisors for the University of Connecticut Venture and Technology Incubator. Paul also serves as a commissioner on the Town of Wethersfield Planning and Zoning Commission and is a Special Olympics tennis coach.

Jasmine L. Travers

Jasmine L. Travers is an assistant professor of nursing at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. Her career is dedicated to designing and conducting research to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities among vulnerable older adult groups using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Her current work focuses on mitigating disparities in appropriate access to and use of in-home and facility-based long-term care for older adults, including home and community-based settings, nursing homes and assisted living.

Travers is the principal investigator of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation four-year Career Development Award through the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, through which she examines the association of neighborhood disadvantage with nursing home outcomes using large-scale nursing home data. She is also principal investigator of a Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leader five-year K76 Award through the National Institute on Aging. In this mixed-method study, she is developing a survey instrument to identify unmet needs that disproportionately drive avoidable nursing home placements.

Most recently, Travers served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes, which released the report The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality on April 6, 2022.

Travers has published widely on aging, long-term care, health disparities and inequities, workforce diversity and workforce issues, vaccinations, and infections. She has presented her work at regional and national health services research, gerontological, nursing and public health conferences.

Prior to joining NYU, Travers completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Clinician Scholars Program at Yale University and a T32-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the New Courtland Center for Transitions and Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

Travers received her Ph.D. from Columbia University School of Nursing, M.H.S. from Yale University, M.S.N. in Adult-Gerontological Health from Stony Brook University and B.S.N. from Adelphi University.

Arjun Vishwanath

Arjun Vishwanath is vice president of analytics at Evalueserve, where he leads teams in developing impactful insights across marketing, eCommerce, digital and customer analytics. In this role, Arjun uses his analytical expertise to guide innovative analytics solutions, deliver measurable revenue and profit growth, and support operational excellence.

Prior to Evalueserve, Arjun held senior positions at leading analytics firms, including senior engagement manager at LatentView Analytics and senior consultant roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Mu Sigma. His mastery of analytics has been recognized through Evalueserve’s Solution Architect of the Year award from 2018 to 2020, and again in 2023.

Arjun holds a Master of Science in Engineering Management from Syracuse University. Beyond his professional accomplishments, he serves as an advisor for startups in the Seattle area and is an avid photographer.