After working in the media and adverising industry during my study years, I followed a research career in academia (1996-2004), culminating in a patent for an AI method for digital content analysis and classification in text, video and audio. In 2004 I abandoned an academic tenure track and co-founded a big data analytics company, to commercialize our patent on content filtering. From two employees in 2004 (myself and a secretary) the company grew to 42 FTEs in 2015 (when I executed a management buy-out to get full ownership), continuously serving Digital and Social Media analytics to most of Fortune 500 companies through their media agencies. All this was done with a great team of people I assembled, trained, coached, managed and inspired.Since 2020, I work as a consulting Director of Data Engineering and Analytics at Wappier Inc. a company focused on using AI/ML for the monetization of mobile games. I lead three teams, one of data scientists devising and implementing ML flows for pricing optimization, one of data engineers setting up optimal data pipelines and one of data analysts / BI analysts providing visualization and insights, keeping abreast of the latest technologies.