Q+A Profile - Data and AI

Question 1.
What are you passionate about?

I’m probably passionate about too much. But mostly, I’m passionate about bringing technical expertise to bear in ways that are meaningful and help people do their jobs. That requires not only having a strong grounding in the relevant technology but also understanding clients’ needs and how they technology can apply, as well as combining those understandings into well-founded recommendations and actions to insert and integrate capabilities in Data and AI. What’s most satisfying is to see a capability in active use, making it possible for someone to do something they couldn’t before, or to have impact on a scale that they couldn’t before.

Question 2.
What drew you to MANTECH?

I came to MANTECH because I was excited to join the Data and AI Practice here. The philosophy in the Practice really aligns with the way I look at things, especially in the focus on meeting clients where they are and making Data and AI advances effective in practical ways for them as they do their jobs.

Question 3.
What do you like most about MANTECH?

I love MANTECH’s focus on clients and what they need. It’s a great part of the culture throughout the company.

Question 5.
What is or has been the most unusual or interesting job you’ve ever had?

My first job, when I was thirteen years old, was coding survey responses onto cards to feed into a mainframe for processing, for my dad’s psychology research. So I guess I’ve been enabling technology to assist with people’s jobs from the beginning, just not in the same way as now.

Question 6.
What advice do you have for those looking to start a career in Data and AI?

There are so many ways to get into Data and AI. My advice is to think about why you’re interested in this field and what you’re motivated to do in it: Are you excited about applying new technology to different problems? Are you fascinated by all the value that may be hiding in data? Are you curious about how to get machines to do surprisingly natural and subtle things? Or something else entirely? Then, take a step based on that. You may want to take a class, you may want to look for ways to incorporate data and AI into your current projects, you may want to look for mentoring, and you may want to do all three, or you may have another idea. Above all, don’t be intimidated. Sometimes AI capabilities are described like magic, but really, this is a technical field like any other.

Question 7.
How do you balance career and home life?

I utilize strong time management skills, prioritize tasks effectively, and maintain a disciplined approach to both my professional and personal commitments. I also have an amazing and supportive husband and family.

Question 8.
What’s the coolest thing you’re working on now?

The coolest thing I’m doing right now is working with the team on repeatable patterns for using agentic AI effectively, balancing the value of allowing the AI system flexibility to respond to different kinds of needs with implementing sufficient controls to reduce risk of unintended consequences.

Question 9.
What do you wish people understood about Data and AI?

I wish people understood that generative AI systems don’t, in general, have a consistent set of beliefs or goals, or an explicit representation of the world that they are using to formulate their responses. They estimate output, typically sequences of words, that is likely based on the input and the data they were trained on. If I can add another wish, I wish that people understood the different roles of data within AI and machine learning, distinguishing among data used to train a model, data used to evaluate the model, data provided for the system to draw on as it uses the trained model, and input to the model.