Willie is an ML Research Scientist at DIHI. He received his PhD from MIT CSAIL in 2022, where he worked with Peter Szolovits. He is passionate about designing systems (technical, bureaucratic, etc) to work for ordinary people. Before his time at Duke, he worked at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLUM), a healthcare startup in DC, and a nonprofit privacy watchdog. During grad school, he worked as a community organizer among the student population, leading to institute policy changes (guaranteed transitional funding for students in unhealthy advising situations and increased number of therapy sessions).