Hilary Mason

Hilary Mason is a computer scientist and entrepreneur who became one of the most recognisable public faces of data science during its emergence as a discipline in the early 2010s. Raised in New York City, she studied computer science at Grinnell College before pursuing further study at Brown University, developing an early specialism in machine learning and network analysis.

Mason rose to prominence as chief scientist at the URL-shortening company bitly, where from roughly 2010 to 2014 she led a small data team that mined the firm's vast stream of link-click data to study how information spreads online. The role, unusually public-facing for a data scientist at the time, made her a sought-after commentator and speaker on what data science could reveal about human behaviour, and she was named to Fortune's "40 Under 40" and Crain's New York "40 Under 40" lists as a result.

In 2014, Mason co-founded Fast Forward Labs with fellow bitly alumnus Micha Gorelick, an applied machine-learning research company that produced reports and prototypes helping enterprises understand and adopt emerging AI techniques. Fast Forward Labs was acquired by Cloudera in 2017, after which Mason served as Cloudera's vice president of research, continuing to bridge cutting-edge machine-learning research with commercial application, and later worked as a data scientist-in-residence at the venture firm Accel.

Mason subsequently pivoted from enterprise data science into consumer entertainment, co-founding Hidden Door, a startup building AI-powered, choose-your-own-adventure storytelling games that let players collaboratively generate narrative worlds. As chief executive, she has continued to draw on her data science and machine-learning background, this time applied to generative AI and interactive fiction.

Beyond her company roles, Mason co-founded hackNY, a nonprofit that places engineering students at New York startups, and was an active member of the Brooklyn hacker collective NYCResistor. She served on Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Technology and Innovation Advisory Council and was named to Fast Company's list of the 100 most creative people in business, cementing her reputation as both a technical practitioner and a widely followed communicator about data and AI.