Ilinca Barsan is a Director of Data Science at Wunderman Thompson, where she leads the data practice for the Global Creative Data Group and works across clients and categories to build creative data products and develop bespoke data science and machine learning solutions. Some of her team’s recent award-winning work includes the Subconscious Order, an app built for Hungerstation that combines computer vision eye-tracking technology with an NLP-driven decision tree to combat decision fatigue, and Speaking in Color, a voice-activated app developed for Sherwin-Williams, translating natural language into algorithmic adjustments to generate colors based on human inspiration.
Prior to joining Wunderman Thompson, Ilinca had been with WPP since 2016, when she was selected for the WPP Fellowship, WPP’s three-year multidisciplinary, international management training program. Rotations in London, Singapore, and NYC across media, analytics, and programmatic advertising, made it possible for her to slowly but surely carve out her niche in the industry.
Ilinca was born in Romania, grew up in Germany, and studied in the UK, where she fell in love with programming and data science during her MSc in Social Science of the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute. She has a passion for weird side projects, storytelling with data, and that sweet spot where code and creativity collide. In her spare time, she likes to write, watercolour, binge read, and take film photos with her Zorki-4 rangefinder camera, which she inherited from her grandfather.
Ilinca feels strongly about helping people from underrepresented backgrounds enter fields like data science and programming and volunteers with Microsoft Teals, teaching computer science in high schools across Brooklyn.
