Alejandro J. Rojas

Data Scientist - Entrepreneur - Consultant

A former top-tier management consultant with a proven track record of developing tools that drive strategic decision-making. A Big Data enthusiast who runs experiments even when running marathons.

About me

Quick Facts

Profile

Complete name:

Alejandro J. Rojas

Phone numbers:

+1 (303) 931 7040 / +58 (414) 326 9353 /



+56 (95) 251 1779

Skype:

ale5446

E-mail:

ale@ischool.berkeley.edu

Linkedin:

https://cl.linkedin.com/in/alejandrojrojas

photo credit: Ariane Hunter

Skills & Tools

Machine Learning

Ipython, Matplotlib, Numpy, Scikit-learn

Social Media Ingestion

Twitter and Facebook APIs

ETL and Analysis

S3, Hadoop, Storm, Hive, Spark, R

Visualizations

Tableau, Seaborn

Financial modeling

Valuations, arbitrage and hedging

EXPERIENCE

Over fifteen years of experience across industries including technology, media & telecommunications and oil & gas, in companies that range from self-started ventures to large public corporations. Currently acquiring deeper expertise in data science to tackle analysis of larger sets of structured and unstructured data.



HONORS & AWARDS

2014-2015: Tumotorizado receives Start-up Chile seed funding
2013: TrixandTrax receives Start-up Chile seed funding
2013: Tumotorizado gets selected by Telefonica's Wayra acceleration program
2012: TrixandTrax gets selected by Telefonica's Wayra acceleration program
2010-2011: TrixandTrax earns consecutive nominations to pitch at MIPTV’s Content 360 Cross Media Festival held in Cannes, France.

Resume

Academic and Professional Highlights
  • Education

  • UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF INFORMATION
    2015-2016+

    Master of Information and Data Science.

    Part-time, two classes per semester.

    Coursework includes:
    Applied Machine Learning, Machine Learning at scale, Storing and Retrieving Data, Exploring and Analyzing Data using R, Scaling up! Really Big Data.

  • MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
    1998-2000

    MBA.

    Concentration on Technology and Finance.

    Latin Club Vice-President.

  • DUKE UNIVERSITY PRATT SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
    1992-1996

    BSE, Cum Laude.

    Dual-Major in Civil Engineering and Economics.

    Full undergraduate scholarship.

    Dean's List with Distinction all years.

  • Employment

  • STARTUP CO-FOUNDER
    2009-2016+

    TRIXANDTRAX: Talent videos from high school and college students distributed across social media.

    TUMOTORIZADO: On-demand delivery platform that connects anyone with independent messengers.

    VENAKITE: Raised $1 MM USD to produce TV series financed through branded content deals.

  • HEAD OF FINANCE
    2002-2009

    KIZER ENERGY: Ran finance for oil and gas services company during a 10-fold growth period. Successful exit.

  • CONSULTING
    1996-2002

    LEVEL (3) COMMUNICATIONS: Advised on global capital allocation process. Defined US sales strategy focus.

    THE BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP: Assessed entry to online travel market in Australia.

    MCKINSEY & CO: Developed pricing model for Venezuelan incumbent telco.

Portfolio

Selected set of products
Startup Toolkit

TRIXANDTRAX

Startup Toolkit

TUMOTORIZADO/ZHIPCODE

Performance Dashboards

SHOOT2TOP

Predictive Modeling

Crime Fighter Scientists

Financial Modeling

OIL PRICE HEDGING

Startup Toolkit

RAV

Performance Dashboards

TweetWordCount

Services

What I can do for you

Startup Toolkit

10-week plan to jumpstart your startup idea

Hands-on and tailor-made plan to get your startup idea off the ground following a MIT's discipline entrepreneurship methodology. Real deliverables to focus your time on the right issues and avoid making mistakes made by others.

Performance Dashboards

Metrics that make your business tick

Customized extraction tools that transforms and load your data for analysis, including data from unstructured sources such as social media. Translate your business into metrics. Track your metrics using simple performance dashboards.

Financial Modeling

Valuations, arbitrage and hedging

Measure key value levers to unlock gains from efficient allocation of capital.

Predictive Modeling

Machine learning

Discover hidden patterns that can deliver productivity and sales growth.

Blog

Some original thoughts to share

AGAINST 99% ODDS

After 10 years of marathon running experience, my own data points suggest that, in my personal case, the probability of finishing a 26.2 mile race under 4 hours is about 1%. However, I found it interesting to “run” and “experiment”
Read more

Running | Nov 8, 2011

Interesting information problems

Recently, I was asked to describe the most interesting information problem I have solved. Depending on the interpretation of “interesting,” I have two stories to share.
Read more

Arbitrage | Jan 7, 2016

Online Video Market: Taking a turn at bat

When I was a kid playing Little League baseball, I remember my coach telling me: “Don’t try to swing for the home-run, just try to hit the ball.” My coach advice seems more relevant than ever when you apply it to how to build businesses in today’s media landscape.
Read more

Online video | April 26, 2015

Information wants to be free

"Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. ...That tension will not go away"
Read more

Free Speech | Jan 9, 2015

Why Latin America may just save Meerkat in the long run?

A “This changes everything! periscope.tv” tweet was recently wrtitten by Twitter's co-founder Jack Dorsey. If he’s right, periscope.tv, a live streaming mobile application, will not only change Twitter’s positioning and monetization strategies but it may even spark accelerated change to Latin America’s online video market.
Read more

Video streaming | Apr 4, 2015

Can Facebook be a source of inspiration to develop your talent?

A couple of months ago, I attended a data science conference at UC Berkeley where I had the opportunity to listen first-hand some of the research being undertaken by data-native organizations such as Facebook and Uber among others
Read more

Online video| Jan 7, 2016

Solving Latin America's eCommerce Achilles' Heel

In an influential article “Everything you need to know to create the next big company in Latin America,” investor Juan Pablo Capello, challenged us to create companies that cater the needs of the “250+ million [Latin Americans] that have come online in the past 13 years.“
Read more

On-demand delivery | Mar 27, 2015

Contact

I would love to hear from you