As the leader of Airbnb’s Data team, Elena is responsible for driving the strategy for how Airbnb uses data for decision making and to infuse products and processes with algorithms. She started as one of the first data scientists at the company, where her initial work set up frameworks for understanding the impact of company initiatives - from the operations teams to the product teams. Her mission is to create a data-driven culture of experimentation at the company. Key initial projects included the impact of Airbnb’s first identify verification product, and the change to double-blind reviews, in which guests and hosts only see the other’s review after each has been written, which she found led to more honest reviews and increased the number of reviews. Prior to Airbnb, Elena received a Ph.D. in Education and an M.A. in Economics from Stanford University. Her dissertation used advanced statistical modeling to predict friendships in schools and analyzed how those friendships impacted the likelihood a lower income student enrolled in college. She received the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship for this work. While at Stanford she was an avid card player and a part of the Stanford team that won the North American Collegiate Bridge Championship. Originally from New Haven, Connecticut, she received a B.A. from Yale University studying Ethics, Politics, and Economics. In her free time she loves to travel, read in a coffee shop, and go to Soulcycle.