Hilary Mason

Hilary Mason is an American entrepreneur and data scientist. She is the co-founder of the startup Fast Forward Labs.

Early life and education Mason was born in New York City, and graduated from Grinnell College with a B.A. in computer science in 2000, and attended Brown University.

Career In 2010, she co-founded hackNY, a non-profit that helps integrate engineering students into the startup community in New York City. On September 7, 2017, Cloudera announced that it had acquired Fast Forward Labs, and that Mason would become Cloudera's Vice President of Research.

She has been interviewed by TechRepublic, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, ProgrammableWeb and others. She has further featured in both Glamour (magazine) and Scientific American

She has also been a member of Mayor Bloomberg's Technology and Innovation Advisory Council. In addition, Mason is a prominent member of NYCResistor, a hacker collective located in Brooklyn.

Fast Forward Labs Fast Forward Labs specializes in machine learning intelligence research. Mason is the CEO of the Fast Forward Labs until the acquisition, on September 7, 2017 by Cloudera, a US open-source software company that offers support, training and software to business clients. Cloudera extended this offer due to FFL's experience and expertise in applying machine learning to practical business problems and their commitment to continual academic and industrial research surveys on new techniques.

Awards Mason received the TechFellows Engineering Leadership award in 2012 worth $100,000. She was also on the Fortune 40 under 40 Ones to Watch list in 2011, as well as Crain's New York 40 under Forty list.