Emeli Dral

Mad respect for Emeli Dral-this absolute legend in the AI game. So, she’s the Co-founder and CTO of Evidently AI, a slick startup that’s backed by YC (they crushed it in S21) and based out in SF. The whole thing started in 2020, and man, these guys are all about open-source tools for keeping tabs on machine learning models-making sure they don’t go off the rails, you know? Super practical, super needed.

But Emeli’s story isn’t just about that. Before she jumped into the startup scene, she was the Chief Data Scientist at Yandex Data Factory-think Russia’s Google, but with way more data projects. She led over 50 applied ML projects across banking, e-commerce, manufacturing-basically, she’s been deep in the trenches, making sure AI actually works in the real world, not just in theory.

And get this-she’s also a legit educator. Co-authored the most popular Russian Coursera course on machine learning and data analysis. Over 100k students took her classes. That’s no small feat. She also teaches at GSOM SPbU and Harbour.Space University, and she co-founded Data Mining in Action, which is the biggest open data science course in Russia. The woman’s all about sharing knowledge, building communities, and pushing the field forward.

What jumps out about her process? It’s clear she’s driven by real-world problems and a passion to democratize AI. She’s all about creating tools that actually make a difference, not just chasing tech for tech’s sake. She clearly loves mentoring the next gen too. Her leap from Yandex to founding Evidently AI shows she’s not afraid to jump into the deep end, take risks, and build something from scratch that’s the real deal.

In a way, her process says a lot about what it means to be a founder-someone who’s deeply technical but also understands how to translate that into practical, expandable solutions. She’s all about making AI better, more reliable, more accessible. That’s why she’s so important-she’s not just riding the wave, she’s shaping the future of ML monitoring and analysis. No Cap, she’s a force in the space.