Affiliation
Vice President, Data Science, Talkspace
Educational Background
Columbia University (Office of Naval Research Graduate Fellow): PhD, Statistics (1991)
Baylor University: BSc, Mathematics (1985)
About Bonnie
Bonnie Ray currently leads data science activities at Talkspace, a NYC-based startup that enables improved mental health for all by providing an affordable, accessible, and secure platform for messaging-based psychotherapy. Previously, she led the data science team at Arena, a Baltimore-based startup focused on analytics-driven hiring assessments. From 2001–2015, she held positions of increasing responsibility at IBM Research, where her role immediately prior to moving to the start-up world was director of cognitive algorithms and she led teams charged with developing machine learning methods for next-generation AI applications.
A graduate of Columbia University and Baylor University, Bonnie started her career in academia as a post-doctoral fellow at the Naval Postgraduate School working with the late Professor Peter Lewis on his study of sea surface temperatures. She went on to hold assistant and associate professor faculty positions in the applied mathematics department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, during which time she received three National Science Foundation awards, including a CAREER grant awarded to promising young scientists that funded her educational and research activities related to environmental time series analysis.
Bonnie was born and raised in the Deep South, living first in Mississippi and then in northern Louisiana before attending college in the heart of Texas. She always had a love of mathematics, but was introduced to statistics as a junior in college and knew almost immediately that a continuing study of pure mathematics was not to be. Summer internships at Texas Instruments after her junior and senior years helped her appreciate the importance of mathematics to address business challenges and the power of computing to obtain efficient solutions, both of which continue to serve as career touchstones.
Bonnie has published more than 60 refereed papers, holds 12+ patents, and is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association. In her spare time, she loves to swim, watch independent films, and relax with a good book.
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