Merry’s career began in the international non-profit sector at charity: water. In those early days of the organization, Merry filled many roles as they grew from 10 employees when she joined to over 70 when she left four years later to pursue a graduate degree. Her time there steeped her in values in Tech for Good and introduced her to scrappy start-up culture. She also got her start there in algorithms, data analysis, and the important challenge in bridging communication gaps between technical and non-technical stakeholders.

After obtaining her M.S. in Applied Informatics at NYU, Merry joined the New York Office of the Attorney General in the Executive Bureau, employing practically every tool in the data science skillset to drive cases with the Civil Rights Division, Financial Crimes Bureau, and Organized Crime Task Force. Using natural language processing to identify a variety of criminal or consumer fraud cases, graph databases to identify gun trafficking, neural networks for computer vision models, using APIs to identify social media bot networks are just a few of the ways in which she supported some of the biggest cases brought by the NYAG during her time there.

A few years after transitioning into the private sector, Merry co-founded MK Analytics with Lacey, supporting big data analytics in the national opiate litigation and fighting gun trafficking with law enforcement partners.

Cath’s career began in research roles, focusing on the distinctive ways that women are impacted by trends and policies related to international conflict, ideologies, and the changing landscape of communication in a world increasingly connected by emerging technologies.

That policy, research and technology background brought Cath to the New York Office of the Attorney General’s Research and Analytics Department, where she worked closely in the data analytics support for cases in the Healthcare and Consumer Protection bureaus.

After connecting with Merry and Lacey through the NYAG, Cath joined them in the private sector. Cath’s ability to connect data analysis with non-technical stakeholders was put to use supporting opioid litigation and expert testimony work. Cath’s unique combination of data chops and storytelling prowess was crucial. While adhering to the austere boundaries of expert testimony, Cath wrote a compelling description of an ecosystem with many players and many issues.

Cath then returned to the public policy research world, pursuing a MS in Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Cath has resumed her focus on the barriers that women face to full participation in public life - in the workforce in particular. She is a contributor to published research modeling barriers to workforce participation and fellowship honoree for research on non-traditional labor issues.

Lacey got her start in Kansas politics, on campaigns electing several women in the state, including Tiffany Muller - the first openly gay elected official in Kansas - to City Council Member in Topeka, Laura Kelly - current governor of Kansas - to the Kansas Senate, and Kathleen Sebelius to Governor.

After moving to New York City to pursue a MA in Economics at the New School, Lacey became a Lead Researcher at 32BJ SEIU, the largest property service workers union in the country. She used her analytical skills to determine the value and fairness of proposed changes to wages, healthcare, and other benefits to get the best contracts negotiated for SEIU members.

At 32BJ Lacey also discovered the power of large datasets from public sources. Using open data, she showed widespread poor conditions at NYC public schools — leading to coverage by news outlets, a City Council hearing, and winning better support for her union and for NYC public school students and educators.

Lacey went on to the New York Office of the Attorney General, where she spearheaded the first data-driven case ever brought by the office - proving that AirBnB was turning a blind eye to illegal hotels operating as a huge percentage of the listings on their site. She pivoted this success into founding the Research and Analytics Department — hiring the first Data Science team at an Attorney General’s Office in the US.

Lacey went on to the private sector, eventually co-founding MK Analytics with Merry in 2021. In recent years, Lacey has been a key witness in over a dozen cases in the national opiate litigation. Lacey introduced unprecedented data mining approaches for billions of records of shipments, prescriptions, and doctors to recreate the view of the opioid market that would have been apparent to defendants as the opioid crisis took place.