About Sunbeam Consulting
I'm Diana Pfeil. I've spent 20+ years in machine learning, starting with recommender systems at Amazon, finishing a PhD at MIT, and serving twice as a startup CTO (Pex, Lumo). I've shipped ML and AI products in travel, digital rights, fintech, health, and insurance.
I started Sunbeam because I kept watching the same pattern from the outside that I'd lived from the inside: smart founders under investor pressure, teams building demos that never shipped, AI roadmaps that read more like wish-lists than plans. I'd lived every failure mode myself: vague targets, endless experiments, the widening gap between ambition and what we'd actually delivered.
The difference between AI that ships and AI that fizzles is rarely the model. It's whether anyone's defined what success looks like. It's whether the team has a rhythm for working under uncertainty. It's whether the right skills are in the room. That's what I help teams build. And I love this stuff, so I try to bring a spirit of fun and momentum to the work.
Background
20+ Years in ML and AI
From classical ML to LLMs and GenAI
Ex-Amazon
Early ML engineer on recommender systems
2x AI Startup CTO
Pex and Lumo, teams from 1 to 75 engineers
MIT PhD
Operations Research and Machine Learning
What It's Like to Work With Me
I'm direct, warm, and allergic to jargon. I set high standards and help your team get there.
I'm relentlessly efficient. I help you make decisions and forward progress fast, so your AI work delivers value your board, investors, and customers can see.
Feeling stuck with your AI direction or execution?
Book some time to chat. I'd love to hear about your situation.
Let's Talk