Escaping Poverty, Benchmarking ML Systems, and Advancing Data-Centric AI with Cody Coleman — James Le

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My father left before I was born. I do not even know his name. My mom was actually in prison when I was born. As soon as she gave birth to me, I had to be put into foster care. Then I was adopted by my maternal grandparents. They had big hearts for trying to adopt me and my siblings, but they really did not have much left to give us. Basically, we grew up in poverty my entire life with welfare and social security.
About a year after my mom was in prison, her charges got dropped. My grandparents took her in, but that became a constant source of drama. While in prison, my mom was declared insane by the FBI. Over 24 years in the house, we racked up 65 police reports for all sorts of crazy stuff my mom did that you cannot even imagine. It is hard actually to convey how chaotic and ridiculous life was. I want to share some stories about my mom to give a sense of her character.
Once she went to prison and my grandparents adopted us, she did not care about me or my siblings. There was never even a notion of caring for my personal health. She loved animals and dreamed of opening her own pet store. We had a ridiculous number of pets, like 11 cats and 14 dogs living in our tiny house. I was sleeping in the living room at the time, and there was not even room for me as a bed. On top of that, I am allergic to cats and dogs. I was constantly sick every single time while I was at home.
Another story that exemplifies this is that: with the constant drama she had with my grandparents, she would get fed up and leave. I remember the first time my mom left. As I woke up one morning, she came to me and said: “Cody, I am leaving for New Mexico. You are smart, and you will figure things out on your own.” She went down the stairs, left the house, and was gone for months at the time.
My grandparents had become jaded based on everything that was happening with my mother. They also had a completely different worldview since they grew up in the Great Depression. My grandfather had a second-grade education, while my grandmother had a fourth-grade education. Going to college or doing well in school meant nothing to them. I would come home and tell them I did well in school, and no one really cared. With the chaos that was going on and everyone trying to survive, I was left on my own to figure everything out.
Source: https://www.eecs.mit.edu/
I did not know anything about applying to colleges. I remember going through the Common Application, looking at the dropdown for different things to major in, and seeing one called Computer Science. As mentioned above, I love computers because of my brother Sean. I was a weird kid growing up and wanted to be a scientist. So I decided to opt-in for computer science as my perspective major.
After that, looking up on the college board to find the best schools for computer science, I figured there was probably no chance I would get in, maybe a small percentage, so why not just go for it? That is when I first found out about MIT. No one where I grew up knew about MIT or any of these places. Literally, my grandmother did not realize that MIT was a thing until a year after I started my freshman year.
I was the first student from my high school to ever go to MIT. I did not realize how big a deal it was. I was just naively optimistic and got myself in over my head. I could not even get to MIT. I was working at the county library at the time. My boss’s parents were driving up to Boston, so I hitched a ride with them to actually get to MIT and start my degree there. I will never forget lying in an extended twin-sized bed. I am 6'4'’, so my feet were hanging out at the end of the bed. I was staring up at the ceiling and realizing the gravity of the situation that I had gotten myself into. I am this kid from a poor public high school, which was ranked 300 out of 322 schools, in the middle of nowhere town in South Jersey. Now, I was at MIT, which was apparently the best school for engineering in the world.
The initial thing hit me, and I was like: “Oh dear God, what have I gotten myself into? What am I possibly doing here? How am I going to figure it out?” When I left high school, my friends were not as supportive. One of my best friends at the time told me that the only reason I got into MIT was that I am black. That explanation caused me a lot of fear, so I had an intense imposter syndrome going into MIT.
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However, two things helped define my time at MIT to get over that immense fear:
No one in Boston or at MIT knew anything about me growing up. It is one of the perks of being the first one from your high school to ever go to MIT. I realized I had a blank slate to define who I was and what I was capable of. I would take advantage of that and think about putting my best foot forward and being the person I ultimately want to be. Effectively, that helped me mentally let go of my past and keep the past from clouding my vision as I move forward.
MIT had all kinds of resources: office hours, recitations, tutorials, etc. If there is anyone who needs these programs, it is definitely me. So I was not afraid to take advantage of them. I also did not over-subscribe myself. I focused on getting the basic classes out of the way, doing the average, and not trying to do too much. Many people fell into this trap at MIT, where they ended up burning themselves out. I stayed a steady course, and that ultimately ended up working out. Not only did I graduate from MIT, but I did pretty well. I had a 4.9 out of 5.0 GA for my Bachelor of Science and a 5.0 GPA for my Masters of Engineering. I was also part of the Engineering Honor Society TPP and the president of the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Honor Society Beta Kappa Nu for two years during my senior year and my Master’s.
That whole process was just a bit of head down — being humble about things and not afraid to ask questions. There were also many opportunities like internships and traveling abroad. I studied abroad for an entire year at Cambridge University, which opened up my world in terms of thinking about my career and life. I used to think my dream job was being a game designer and working for Epic Games. Then I realized that there is so much you can do with computer science, such as web development, data science, machine learning, etc. It felt like jumping off a cliff into an amazing experience that showed me the world.
On His Favorite Classes at MIT
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About the show
Datacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.
Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. Get in touch with feedback or guest suggestions by emailing khanhle.1013@gmail.com.
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