Vera Southwell

Emerging Threats Manager

I work for eBay, an e-commerce platform that provides people around the world opportunities to buy and sell products.

I find fraudsters on eBay platform using data models so that buyers and sellers can have safe shopping experience.

I love that I can be creative when solving problems. No one tells me how to specifically do anything.

I am usually given a rather vague question that needs to be answered, such as "why are we losing money in this area and what needs to be done to stop it?" Then I try to find information about the area that needs help. I read documentation and talk to others. I make sure I understand everything in great detail and collect the data. I analyze the data using programming languages ( i.e. python, R, SQL, etc.) and build algorithms. I present my work to other colleagues and point out things that need to be done to stop losing money in the area I was asked to investigate.

I has been a long journey... I grew up in Russia and came to the US at the age of 21 having only 50 cents. My first job was cleaning hotel rooms. I did not speak English well at the time. Going to school has always been important in my career advancement. I hold multiple professional certificates, 2 Bachelors Degrees, MBA and I am currently enrolled in a Post-Graduate Program in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Texas at Austin.

At some point I would like to write a book about how to improve e-commerce processes.

I love reading books in the original language they were written. I read and speak English, Russian, French and Spanish.

"I have insatiable curiosity. It's solving problems. Every time you solve a problem, another one shows up behind it. That's the challenge." Grace Hopper (Queen of Computer Code)