Max Ghenis
Co-founder And CEO at Policy Simulation Library
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMax Ghenis is a policy entrepreneur, technologist, and economist who builds open-source tools to make public policy analysis transparent and accessible. As co-founder and CEO of PolicyEngine and founder of the UBI Center, he combines product leadership with rigorous microsimulation and quantitative research to model tax, benefits, and universal basic income effects across households. A former Google and YouTube data scientist, he brings 12+ years of experience turning large-scale analytics and NLP into reproducible research workflows and production insights. He serves on the Policy Simulation Library leadership council and contributes to well-known open projects like the Tax-Calculator microsimulator and pytrends testing infrastructure, reflecting his emphasis on reproducibility and community-driven tools. Based in Washington, DC, Max pairs MIT training in Data, Economics, and Development Policy with grassroots advocacy—co-founding a regional YIMBY group and running for party delegate—to push research into real-world policy change.
12 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
B.A. Operations Research and Management Science minors in Industrial Engineering and Music, B.A. Operations Research and Management Science minors in Industrial Engineering and Music at University of California, BerkeleyMaster of Science - MS Data Economics and Development Policy, Master of Science - MS Data Economics and Development Policy at Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMicromasters Data Economics and Development Policy, Micromasters Data Economics and Development Policy at MITx Courses
Stackoverflow
15,344reputation
3.4mreached
92answers
107questions
dataframe
top-5%
matplotlib
top-5%
google-drive-api
top-5%
r
top-1%
python
top-5%
pandas
top-5%
Github Skills (19)
pytest10
python10
r10
testing10
documentation10
test-automation10
matplotlib9
pandas9
dataframe9
google-sheets9
google-drive-api9
api-testing8
plotly-python6
ggplot6
google-apps6
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
PSLmodels/Tax-Calculator
Dec 2017 - Jun 2021
USA Federal Individual Income and Payroll Tax Microsimulation Model
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:2 reviews, 150 commits, 24 PRs in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Max made several contributions to the codebase, including adding instructions to the contributor guide, renaming a variable in a Python function, and updating and reverting changes to a documentation file. The user worked with the codebase documentation, modified Python functions, and updated the documentation recipes.
individualpayrollpythonlawpsl-cataloged
GeneralMills/pytrends
Jun 2020 - Jun 2021
Pseudo API for Google Trends
Role in this project:QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:14 commits, 5 PRs, 16 comments in 11 months
Contributions summary:Max primarily contributed to improving the testing infrastructure for the `pytrends` project, which is a pseudo-API for Google Trends. Their work involved removing outdated Python 2 functionality, updating test configurations, and adding and modifying tests. Specifically, they introduced tests for various `gprop` values and validated the data types in the interest over time function.
pseudoapigoogle-trendstrends
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