Fareeza Ali

Why did you choose the DSAN program at GU? 

In my job, I kept running into the same wall where there was so much data, but finding the right information in it was getting harder and harder. Data science felt like the toolkit I was missing, and Georgetown stood out because the program actually goes deep and wasn’t accelerated. It’s two full years, in person, and Georgetown’s ethos around educating the whole person and living in service to others lined up with who I am, personally and professionally. Being in DC just made it the right place for the kind of mission-driven work I want to keep doing.

Who had the greatest influence on your career path/education path?

Honestly, not one person but a group of them: the women in my family and the resilient women who came before me. My ancestors were brought from South Asia to Fiji as indentured laborers more than a century ago, and generations later my mom built a life for us in the U.S. so my sister and I could have opportunities we might not have had otherwise. That sense of moving forward for the next generation is a big part of why I chose public service, and the women in my lineage who kept getting back up no matter what they endured are what push me to keep learning and growing in hopes of making the world a little less bad.

What is your favorite class in the DSAN program?

So far it’s Deep Learning and Neural Nets (DSAN 6600) with Dr. James Hickman, who has taught a lot of my classes and consistently pushes us to do more than the minimum. I’m especially proud of our final project, where we built a neural network interpretability toolkit. It’s basically a way to look inside the black box and see how a model is actually “thinking” as it runs. The class was a good reminder that when you find something that genuinely interests you and you push yourself toward it, the learning kind of happens along the way.

Any advice you’d give prospective students?

You don’t need to have it all figured out. We’re here to learn, and if we had the answers we wouldn’t be students. So take the work seriously, but don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and apply what you’re learning to the problems you actually care about. Data science is a tool and you’re the one wielding it, so the real question is what you want to do with it. When you keep that in focus, the rest gets easier! Also, be a good teammate and build real relationships with your peers, because you’ll lean on each other when the coursework gets hard.

With your background in journalism and public affairs, what drew you to data science?

There was actually a pit stop in between! I went from public affairs to national security work, which is really what led me to data science. In all three, my job was basically the same: take a lot of information and turn it into something deliverable. The audiences and the impact of the “stories” changed though, and in national security I was informing higher-impact decisions. The more I did that work, the better I wanted to be at it, and data science felt like a pathway to begin to answer what previously seemed like unknowable questions.

Favorite way to spend your free time?

My friends will say diving into heavy topics way too much! Which, fair. But I also love cooking, boardgames, dancing to the r&b and hiphop I grew up on, and spending time with people I love. I appreciate a good documentary and will fall down a rabbit hole on anything geopolitics, true crime, and space. I think the common thread is that I’m always chasing something that gives me a new perspective, whether that’s traveling somewhere I’ve never been, tasting a food I’ve never had, or trying to understand someone whose life looks nothing like mine!

If you were stuck on a desert island, what three things would you want with you?

I’m choosing to survive, so: my nani (grandma), because she’s the most resourceful and calm person I know, a machete, and a satellite phone with a direct line to the nearest U.S. Navy ship.