About Me

Ph.D. in Economics

University of Southern California, 2021

Dissertation: "Essays on Causal Inference (Affirmative Action in Korea - Regression Discontinuity with Multiple Assignment Variables)"

M.A. in Economics

Korea University, 2010

Honors: Brain Korea 21 scholarship

B.S. in Mathematical Sciences

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), 2008

Honors: Mathematical Science Department scholarship | National Science and Technology scholarship

Coupang (RG Consumables, Business Operations), Seoul, Korea

Leading the Rocket Growth Consumables Business Operations team — planning, execution and issue resolution across 2P channel operations

• Fee Structure Redesign: Redesigned the commission structure for low-ASP assortments so small-basket items are economically worth listing for sellers, opening up GMV growth in the affected Snacks & Meal Essentials categories
• Seller Growth Framework: Built a seller growth-forecasting and recruitment framework on per-seller P&L simulation that locates the binding cost constraint — ad spend, shipping, or FC fees — and assigns the matching growth play, lifting 3P→2P seller conversion in place of a one-size-fits-all pitch
• Performance Tracking: Built a category- and SKU-level performance tracker that replaced recurring manual reporting, giving category, BD and finance partners one shared read on where growth is actually coming from
• Stack: SQL, Python, P&L simulation, difference-in-differences, A/B testing, metrics framework design

AIEconLab (인공지능경제연구소), Korea (Remote) · Part-time

Co-founded with two fellow USC economics PhDs — a Korean research collective on the economics of AI

• Research Collective Leadership: Co-founded and run the collective — set research direction, manage publication operations, and hold editorial quality across a body of work now at 39 pieces in three tracks (AI columns, AI analysis, AI trends)
• Causal Inference & Platform Economics Track: Author the track (7 pieces) — including how Amazon engineers its marketplace with economics (Double ML, causal forests) and what transfers to other marketplaces, and why Uber's delivery-density advantage stops at national borders
• Research Translation: Translate academic method into practitioner language — e.g. a five-zone diagnostic (input, context, retrieval, reasoning, execution) for locating where enterprise AI deployments actually break

VWS, Seoul, Korea

Owned AI product strategy for NPL recovery end to end — problem framing, model design, deployment, and the operating metrics leadership reviews

• Recovery Recommendation Pipeline: Lifted debt-recovery rates 1.2–1.3x and cut collection operating cost 15% by designing an LLM + behavioral-ML recommendation pipeline that ranks contact channel, timing and message per delinquent account, deployed across multiple B2B clients
• Causal Channel Measurement: Rebuilt the channel strategy by measuring true channel lift with causal inference (DID / uplift modeling) rather than raw response rates, retiring channels that showed no incremental effect
• Funnel Diagnostics: Found a hidden cause of falling funnel conversion by instrumenting stage-level KPI monitoring, isolating the failing step and giving operations a weekly read they act on directly

Datacrunch Global, Seoul, Korea (Remote)

Concurrent client engagement while running Decode Data — data pipelines and demand forecasting

• Causal-Inference Based Forecasting: Developed a hybrid model combining statistical intervention analysis with Deep Learning (LSTM). Causally separated organic demand from promotion-driven spikes to minimize inventory risk and quantify marketing ROI
• Scalable ETL Architecture: Designed AWS-based pipelines processing over 3M daily e-commerce transactions. Optimized PySpark jobs to reduce processing time by 70% and ensured data integrity across heterogeneous systems (WMS/ERP)
• Automated Decision Support System: Built a Data Warehouse integrating fragmented order/inventory data and deployed real-time ordering recommendation APIs to enable data-driven decision-making

Decode Data Inc., Los Angeles, USA

• Startup Leadership: Led the entire product lifecycle from ideation to development and team building, establishing an Agile organizational culture
• ALM Valuation Engine: Developed an Asset-Liability Management (ALM) engine implementing bootstrapping algorithms for yield curve derivation and risk-neutral approaches for fair value calculation

Korea Army Academy at Yeongcheon (KAAY), Yeongcheon, Korea

• Defense Econometrics: Led government research projects on defense R&D efficiency. Estimated optimal defense spending using panel data regression and published findings in academic journals
• Organizational Analysis: Analyzed the correlation between economic incentives and organizational effectiveness using large-scale survey data to improve personnel management
• Educational Excellence: Designed economics curriculum and implemented a quantitative academic performance evaluation system, achieving the top departmental ranking for two consecutive years

Korea University (Client: Hyundai Mobis), Seoul, Korea

• Regulatory Risk Mitigation: Contributed to saving approx. $120M in potential fines by econometrically modeling pricing mechanisms to prove compliance with fair trade regulations
• Causal Analysis for Antitrust: Utilized Difference-in-Differences (DID) to analyze the causal effect of corporate actions on market prices, providing logical grounds for antitrust defense