Clinton Brownley
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Mail code: 3720Campus: Phoenix
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Clinton Brownley, Ph.D., is currently a lead data scientist at Tala, with a focus on causal inference, machine learning, and experimentation. Prior to this role, he was a data scientist at Meta (formerly Facebook), where he was responsible for a variety of analytics projects designed to empower employees to do their best work. Prior to this role, he was a data scientist at WhatsApp, working to improve messaging and VoIP calling performance and reliability. Before WhatsApp, he worked on large-scale infrastructure analytics projects to inform hardware acquisition, maintenance, and datacenter operations decisions at Facebook.
Prior to Facebook, Clinton was an assistant to the city manager in the City of Campbell, CA, aligning the city’s resources to the city council’s policy priorities. During this time, Clinton completed the ICMA's Emerging Leaders Development Program. Before Campbell, he was a management analyst in the City of Cupertino, CA, implementing a wide range of special projects, including conducting an inter-governmental policy study, coordinating public outreach for a ballot measure, and delivering grant funds. During this time, Clinton completed the Leadership 95014 Program provided by the Wilfred Jarvis Institute. Before Campbell, he was a financial manager in the I.T. department in the Washington, D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, where he provided overall leadership for the department's operating and capital improvement budgets. During this time, he also served as an economics fellow with the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
As an avid student and teacher of modern public administration, data analysis, and visualization techniques, Clinton teaches courses in public administration for ASU's School of Public Affairs, interactive data visualization, applied machine learning, and experimentation for UC Berkeley's MIDS program, and a graduate course in regression analysis for NYU's A3SR program. He also leads an annual machine learning in python workshop at the ML Week and ODSC West conferences. Clinton is the author of two books, "Foundations for Analytics with Python" and "Multi-objective Decision Analysis". Clinton is a former planning commissioner for the City of Cupertino and is currently a planning commissioner for the City of Saratoga.
Clinton is a past-president of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the American Statistical Association and is a council member for the Section on Practice of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Clinton received degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and American University.
Ph.D. Public Administration and Policy, American University
M.S. Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University Heinz School
B.S. Ethics, History, and Public Policy; Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University
Courses
2026 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| PAF 301 | Applied Statistics |
2025 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| PAF 300 | Public Management and Admin |