Kamela Taleb joined Akur8 as an Actuarial Data Scientist in 2025. She partners with insurers to help them achieve their goals efficiently, leveraging Akur8’s transparent machine learning platform to enhance pricing performance and data-driven decision-making. Over the past eight years, Kamela has held actuarial and pricing roles across a wide range of business lines, including commercial, cyber, natural catastrophe, auto, and construction. At AXA, one of France’s leading insurers, she experienced firsthand Akur8’s strong added value. There, she contributed to developing a new auto pricing structure and strategy using advanced modeling techniques such as GLMs and GBMs, driving greater pricing sophistication and optimization.

Samuel Gifford is an Actuarial Data Scientist at Akur8. He has extensive experience in actuarial and data science roles, particularly in predictive modeling, causal analytics, and demand modeling. He is currently finishing a PhD in economics at the University of Illinois Chicago concentrated in applied microeconomics. Sam has 4 years of teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate level, primarily in econometrics.