Passiona Cottee

Data Scientist, Commonwealth Bank, Co-lecturer at UTS

Sydney

Passiona collaborates on projects at the nexus of data, automation, privacy and ethics across both public and private sectors. She currently works as data scientist at the CBA and a sessional lecturer in privacy law at UTS. Prior to her current roles, she worked at the NSW Data Analytics Centre, the NSW Government's data science hub where she delivered a first-of-its-kind, cross-agency human services dataset. For over eight years Passiona worked on data-driven features and products at Australia’s subscription television broadcaster, Foxtel, where she delivered the company’s first recommendation engine in 2009. During this time, Passiona also completed her practical legal training with Foxtel’s in-house legal counsel. Seeing first-hand the growing role of data within organisations and society, Passiona commenced a Master of Data Science and Innovation for the course’s inaugural intake at the University of Technology, Sydney and now returns to lecture in the same degree.

Admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW as a solicitor in 2012, Passiona holds a current Australian practicing certificate from the Law Society of New South Wales. To Passiona, these two diverse professions, data science and law, work hand-in-hand to allow for the ethical use of machine learning.