Curai ML Engineer Spotlight: Luladay Price
Curaians agree that one of the best aspects of Curai is working alongside our teammates each day. To highlight what it’s like working here, we are writing a spotlight series to showcase our colleagues and share a bit more what the day-to-day is like and what we are building.
Luladay is one of our ML engineers and our next spotlight! Her answer to the company icebreaker question (what is your favorite kind of cheese 🧀) is Havarti or Brie! Yum:)
Why did you decide to join? What keeps you here now?
During my job search, I wanted to find a company with a meaningful, people-oriented mission with interesting machine learning problems. I can definitely say I have found all this in Curai.
Curai’s mission of providing quality healthcare to the world inspired me during my initial interviews, and continues to inspire me daily. I really appreciate how Curai folks are aligned on and continuously guided by this goal.
I was also drawn to Curai for its position at the intersection of machine learning and healthcare. This space presents a number of exciting ML challenges, and I’m grateful that I can collaborate with accomplished ML folks on projects in this space.
What makes our engineering team culture unique?
Everyone is so NICE. Incredibly nice. Folks are always willing to jump in and help debug some code, answer questions, give constructive feedback, point you to relevant resources, etc. It’s evident that the engineering team as a whole is dedicated to helping everyone grow and succeed at their tasks. I think this collective betterment has allowed the product to progress at the fast pace it does.
What were you afraid of before joining Curai?
I was a bit nervous about working at a start-up as my first job out of graduate school. I had very little industry experience coming in, having done only one onsite internship at a large company. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a start-up on various fronts (i.e. pace of work, structured projects, mentorship opportunities, etc.) Fortunately, like most things in life, a lot of fears and hesitations subside once you’ve jumped in and begun. I’m really glad I chose to work at Curai because there have been endless opportunities for growth and learning that I doubt I would’ve been able to get at a larger company!
What have you learned since you joined Curai?
I’ve learned so many things at Curai, from VSCode keyboard shortcuts that make coding a bit easier to creating components in React. But one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that effective collaboration takes work but is ultimately worthwhile. Projects at Curai are almost guaranteed to require cross-team collaboration; this means folks from product, ML, clinical informatics, and operations are all working together. Everyone brings different backgrounds, perspectives, and communication styles to the table; understanding these and constantly staying aligned despite the differences is critical to a successful project.
What are you working on right now?
Currently working on a few projects aimed at increasing provider efficiency during medical history taking.
Favorite Curai moment?
Using our app to order prescriptions for myself! It was truly amazing to see our mission come to fruition in such a smooth and convenient process :)
OOO
Outside of the office, Luladay can be found:
💃 Working out to a Zumba / cardio dance class (yoga if we’re feeling chill )
📚 Reading memoirs or nonfiction books
😃 Doing online crossword puzzles with friends
What would you say to someone thinking about joining our team?
Be ready to learn and grow more than you can imagine! You can make a lot of impact in a short amount of time so roll up your sleeves and let’s get to work 💯💪
Please stay tuned next month for our next Curaian spotlight! We’ll pass the baton to Luladay to highlight a teammate. If you’re passionate about healthcare access, up for bold challenges, and curious about working alongside really great people, don’t hesitate to say hi 👋
