Vice President
Madison Hawkinson
I’m deeply passionate about enabling data science and artificial intelligence at scale and putting tooling solutions in the hands of the developers who are making real life magic happen.
My Philosophy
Being a data scientist or an engineer today is hard (albeit it gets much easier every year). Building real applied artificial intelligence is still an uphill battle that requires stitching together a behemoth of infrastructure, vendors and experts while also managing stakeholder expectations and under promising while over delivering. I’m deeply passionate about enabling data science and artificial intelligence at scale and putting tooling solutions in the hands of the developers who are making real life magic happen. I believe data scientists and engineers are best suited to lead problem solving in the future and I am best able to improve the painpoints faced by data scientists today from the seat of venture capital.
Experience
Before finding my home at Costanoa, I’ve been a data scientist at nearly every type and size of organization. I led the data science and machine learning organization at Thrasio, a hyper-growth ecommerce Amazon aggregator startup. Before this, I led the data science investing initiative at Greycroft which is a venture capital firm in NYC. I spent the first three years of my career as a data scientist at Meta optimizing the ad auction through econometrics data science and building ML platform.
Education
B.S. in Management, Science and Engineering from Stanford University
Outside of Work
I am passionate about living a wildly adventurous life, in and outside of work. I’m always game to try anything and often jump into new fitness challenges (running a half marathon) or cooking challenges (home making and documenting original soup recipes every “Soup Sunday”). I run a Sonoma wine label called Ranch Road Vineyards and thoroughly enjoy exploring and learning about new wine regions. As a native Coloradan, I ski every chance I get and find myself constantly attending rodeos (in a past life, I used to be a professional rodeo performer). I am always planning multiple trips at once and can’t get my mind off the next adventure.