Ruiting (Sherry) Zha
Chicago,IL
Summary
Senior Data Scientist with 7 years of experience across data science, AI applications, and product marketing. Specializes in NLP, predictive modeling, and applying machine learning to marketing strategy and brand development. Combines business insight with technical expertise to drive customer-centric, data-informed decisions.
Overview
8
8
years of professional experience
Work History
Sr. Data Scientist
CharacTour LLC
Chicago, IL
01.2023 - 01.2026
- Lead development of AI-powered brand identity strategies in collaboration with marketing consultants and interns, delivering a successful Fortune 50 brand pilot focused on Gen Z repositioning.
- Manage and mentor a team to build NLP models using PyTorch and Hugging Face Transformers, reducing prediction error by 10% and boosting core product performance.
- Build and maintain a real-time inference pipeline on AWS SageMaker for predictive modeling, serving as a key endpoint of the brand management platform.
- Analyze personality data from 10M+ users using pandas and clustering algorithms (KMeans, DBSCAN), uncovering 500+ audience segments to support data-driven client strategies.
- Collect and analyze data from thousands of top TikTok and Instagram influencers to develop a personality-based brand voice–influencer matching algorithm, enhancing precision in creator partnerships and campaign alignment.
Data Science Consultant
Chamberlain Group
Chicago, IL
03.2022 - 12.2022
- As a member of UChicago's Capstone Team, worked with the customer experience team at Chamberlain Group to develop a workforce management plan by analyzing the historical data of the call center
- Established an interchangeable predictor for Chamberlain’s call center, using machine learning (Gradient Boosting, Random Forest, etc.) to provide a projected service level based on headcount restraints and vice versa under various what-if scenarios
Sr. Data Science Intern
CharacTour LLC
Chicago, IL
06.2022 - 08.2022
- Showcased the personality data on highly interactive visualization dashboards using Python Plotly
- Trained NLP model and voting classifier using thousands of entertainment scripts to predict the personalities that will most likely enjoy a movie or TV show, achieving ~70% accuracy
Sr. Product Marketing Manager
Weichen Education
Beijing, China
10.2017 - 09.2021
- Managed a team of 4 dedicated to developing Go-To-Market strategies for online English courses totaling ~$1.25M in annual sales
- Initiated a new TOEFL test training sub-brand by leading a cross-functional team to design new courses and develop Go-To-Market strategies
Education
Master of Science - Analytics (Applied Data Science)
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL12.2022
Bachelor of Economics -
Capital University of Economics And Business
Beijing06.2017
Some College (No Degree) -
University of California - San Diego
La Jolla, CA06-2016
Skills
- Programming: Python, SQL
- Machine Learning and Stat Analysis
- Natural language processing
- Artificial intelligence applications
- Cross-Functional Team Management
- Go-To-Market Strategy
Timeline
Sr. Data Scientist
CharacTour LLC
01.2023 - 01.2026
Sr. Data Science Intern
CharacTour LLC
06.2022 - 08.2022
Data Science Consultant
Chamberlain Group
03.2022 - 12.2022
Sr. Product Marketing Manager
Weichen Education
10.2017 - 09.2021
Master of Science - Analytics (Applied Data Science)
University of Chicago
Bachelor of Economics -
Capital University of Economics And Business
Some College (No Degree) -
University of California - San Diego