About
Leonard Greski currently leads the Architecture practice at LeadingAgile, the leader in helping large companies increase economic value through agile transformation. In addition to leading client engagements, Len is developing new products focused on assessing large organizations as they move towards business agility.
Prior to LeadingAgile Len was Vice President, Technology at Travelport, the partner of choice for travel’s game changers. He led engineering delivery of Travelport’s supplier connections, middleware services, and the cloud-based platform for Travelport’s next generation application programming interface products based on the Open Travel Alliance 2.0 specification. The products developed by Len’s team process hundreds of millions of requests and more than 1 terabyte of data daily. At Travelport Len created a data science team that embedded machine learning algorithms into Travelport products, improving both customer experience and the cost to serve our customers. His team also managed the shopping analytics and reporting capability that provided real-time visibility into customers’ shopping experiences for airline tickets.
Leonard was previously Director, eCommerce Transformation at Hewlett-Packard, where he led a global team that delivered a graphically rich, easy-to-use eCommerce experience for U.S. consumers in half the time of a typical eCommerce program. The new HP consumer online store generated 19.3% year over year sales growth its first Cyber Monday in production.
Len also led delivery of the digital experience for HP’s Make it Matter branding campaign that debuted during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. The digital experiences generated more than 4 billion impressions on Facebook, 5 million video views on YouTube, and 800,000 fans on LinkedIn during the campaign’s first four months. The campaign also inspired 1.3 million visits to the Make It Matter landing page on HP.com, three times the number of visits generated by HP’s previous corporate campaign.
Prior to joining Hewlett-Packard, Leonard led a variety of eCommerce initiatives at W.W. Grainger. His leadership helped grainger.com achieve the #15 ranking in the Internet Retailer 500 in 2011, and the #76 ranking in the Mobile Retailer 400 within 12 months of launching mobile commerce. Len led key product initiatives and designed the e-commerce architecture that powered Grainger e-commerce growth from 7% to 71% of Grainger’s total business.
Leonard started his career in market research at Information Resources Inc., developing statistical and artificial intelligence models to predict consumer behavior. At IRI, Len developed the statistical models supporting the BehaviorScan Fastrac new product introduction service, worked on a neural network that was embedded within the InfoScan syndicated tracking service, and developed a machine learning algorithm that uncovered a large consumer package goods manufacturer’s secret price test that was being conducted in several markets in the western United States.
Academia
Len received his introduction to data science as an undergraduate research assistant on a National Science Foundation project to study political contributions to Illinois legislative candidates that supported the book The Party Network: the robust organization of Illinois Republicans by Mildred A. Schwartz.
As a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago Len studied statistical graphics, exploratory data analysis, and multivariate analysis under the tutelege of Leland Wilkinson, founder of SYSTAT and author of the book The Grammar of Graphics. He also served as a teaching assistant for the graduate level inferential statistics course in the department of Sociology.
Serving in the Community
Len serves on the Industry Advisory Board for the College of Computing and Software Engineering at Kennesaw State University, where he mentors graduate students in the School of Data Science and Analytics. He has supported a number of community service projects, ranging from leading a Junior Achievement business startup course to serving with Love Atlanta, and the Roswell, GA Rotary Club.
In the area of data science, Len has served as Technology Lead for ATLytiCS.org an Atlanta-based organization that connects non-profit organizations with data science resources, supporting the Improving Mental Health initiative. He has also served since 2015 as a Community Mentor in the Johns Hopkins University Data Science Specialization offered via Coursera.org. Len has earned a top 5% ranking in the reputation leagues on Stackoverflow, where he primarily answers questions about R and SAS.
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