Alya Abbott in

Alya Abbott

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COO at Kandra Labs, Inc. (creators of Zulip)
📍 San Francisco, California, United States

Alya Abbott is the COO of Kandra Labs, creators of the open-source team chat app, Zulip. She leverages her extensive background leading data science teams at major tech companies like Lyft and Upwork to guide product, marketing, and community strategy. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from MIT.

Outside of her professional life, Alya has a diverse range of interests. She enjoys discussing linguistics, playing the card game bridge, and is interested in travel. Her varied intellectual curiosities extend to topics like dinosaurs.

Unique fact: Her PhD dissertation from MIT was titled, "Case in Uyghur and Beyond, " focusing on theoretical linguistics.

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Experience
13 Years
Current Role
COO
Job Level
Leadership
Location
San Francisco, California, United States
Personality Overview

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Communication Style
Decision Approach
Work Preference

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Priorities

Topics Alya cares about

Open Source Community
Leads community efforts for Zulip, an open-source project, and writes articles on how to effectively manage community contributions.
Data Portability
Has publicly written about the importance of users being able to export their data freely from platforms, contrasting different company policies.
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Career

Work history

9-2023
COO
Kandra Labs, Inc. (creators of Zulip)
3-2021 - 9-2023
Head of Product
Kandra Labs, Inc. (creators of Zulip)
8-2018 - 3-2021
Head of Telematics Data Science
Lyft
2-2017 - 8-2018
Director of Data Science
Upwork
5-2015 - 1-2017
Senior Data Scientist
Upwork
In the press

Media appearances

No media yetWe could not find public media appearances for this person.
Education
2006 - 2011
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2002 - 2006
Bachelor of Science (B.S.)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Social presence
in
Behavioral profile

DISC profile (public)

DISC behavioral profile

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