Ep. 140: Sarah Aerni, Salesforce

Published: Dec. 18, 2019, 9 a.m.

Sarah Aerni is a data scientist Salesforce. In this conversation, Sarah leads off by talking about what that even means. First, she gives a brief history of the expectation in customer experience and how it\u2019s evolved with the introduction of AI. Then she describes her role in this way: \u201cMy role is to lead a team of really brilliant individuals that are focused on how to make it possible for Salesforce customers to build models, add predictions and intelligence without building out an entire data science team.\u201d Sarah comes from a deep science background, having spent six years becoming the expert on automated labeling of C. elegans\u2014a worm cell. How does that relate to forward-facing data science on modern platforms? Building a model is building a model, as Sarah explains. While she shirks the term \u201cunicorn,\u201d it is easy to understand why she\u2019s been described that way listening to this episode.