Laurel Kona Goodhart - Software Engineer, Natural Language Processing Specialist, and Computational Linguist
 Email: hi @ konahart.com
 Website: konahart.com
 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/konahart
 Github: https://github.com/konahart
 Twitter: @konahart

I work at the intersection of language, technology, and storytelling to create the next generation of character-driven AI experiences.

Technical Skills & Tools
Specialties: Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), conventional Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning, Large Language Models (LLMs)
Skills: Data Management, Annotation, User Interface and User Experience Design (UI/UX), Research
Code: Python, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, C++, Java
Tools: Unity, Jupyter, Chakra UI, Flask, MongoDB, MySQL, Stanford CoreNLP, NLTK, spaCy, Rasa, Git

Experience
Natural Language Understanding Specialist, Walt Disney Imagineering, remote, 2021 -- current
Projects:
- D3-O9, interactive Star Wars droid character (Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser, Walt Disney World);
- internal AI character creation tools
Responsibilities:
- Leading training, evaluation, and improvement of NLU systems for D3-O9 character
- Collaborating with creative peers to guarantee that our products embody “Disney magic”
- Using expertise in AI character production to translate between creative and technical teams
- Designing and building software tools for next generation of AI character experiences

Senior Software Engineer, Primed Technologies, San Francisco, CA / remote, 2019 -- 2021
Product:
- Long-term companion robot + app-based character for kids
Responsibilities:
- Led software architecture design for state-of-the-art computer conversation at scale
- Created a fantastical digital companion in a sprite-based iOS app
- Conducted rapid prototyping of 3D mobile games

Natural Language Processing Specialist, Woebot Labs, Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2018
Product:
- Woebot, a mental health chatbot that teaches users Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques
Responsibilities:
- Applied expertise in chatbot conversational design to improve existing product
- Created a novel application of NLU to therapeutic exercises
  - Trained, evaluated, and deployed language models for activity and mood classification
  - Established a data collection and annotation strategy
- Conducted analysis of effects of NLU performance on retention during app onboarding

Artificial Intelligence Engineer, PullString, Inc. (formerly ToyTalk, Inc.), San Francisco, CA, 2015 -- 2017
Products:
- PullString Author, a no-code software platform for authoring human-fidelity AI conversation;
- Hello Barbie, a first-of-its-kind two-way conversational Barbie doll;
- character chat apps including: Hearthstone, Call of Duty, and Humani: Jessie’s Story (Facebook Messenger); Doctor Strange (Skype); and Thomas & Friends Talk to You (iOS and Android)
Responsibilities:
- Designed and implemented NLP features for use by non-technical users
  - Negation detection, number conversion, user and author input normalization
  - Expressive word/pattern matching syntax for use by non-technical users
  - NLP and ML -powered synonym and phrase suggestion
- Established large-scale testing to support data-driven decision-making

Education
Deep Learning Specialization, DeepLearning.AI, Coursera 2018
  - 5 courses:
    - Neural Networks and Deep Learning
    - Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter tuning, Regularization and Optimization
    - Structuring Machine Learning Projects
    - Convolutional Neural Networks
    - Sequence Models

Master of Science in Computational Linguistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA  2013—2014
  - Completed intensive, graduate-level program in 1 year
  - Focused on Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), and language modeling
    - Specific topics include: Machine Translation, Information Retrieval, and Question Answering

Bachelor of Arts in Applied Linguistics, Portland State University, Portland, OR 2009–2013
 - Minor in Computer Science
 - Honors College, undergraduate thesis: “The Linguistics of Sentiment Analysis” (see Publications)