Nicholas Schmidt

Nick specializes in the application of statistics and economics to questions of law, regulatory compliance, and best practices in model governance. He has created AI-based techniques that enable clients to minimize disparate impact in credit, insurance, and marketing models. Nick writes and speaks frequently on the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, Explainable AI and how to make fairer machine learning algorithms.

Nick is currently a Partner and the Artificial Intelligence Practice Leader at BLDS, LLC, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm that provides expert guidance to companies and regulators in the application of economics and statistics to questions of law and regulation. In his consulting work, Nick focuses on algorithmic fairness, explainable AI and ensuring robust model governance practices. As head of the AI practice, Nick develops and assists in the deployment of methods that allow his clients to make their AI models fairer and more inclusive.

His consulting work led to the development of SolasAI, a compliance-focused and AI-based software platform that identifies and mitigates bias and discrimination in algorithmic decisioning. As its CEO, Nick has led SolasAI to create a groundbreaking product that allows customers to review, analyze, and make decisions related to disparity reduction in an efficient and transparent way. This cutting-edge product illuminates and reduces causes of disparate impact, disparate treatment, and other forms of bias in algorithmic models, protecting customers against regulatory, legal, and reputational problems, while accelerating modelers’ ability to innovate.

Nick’s work is used by many of the country’s most prominent consumer lenders, FinTech companies, life and health insurers, as well as other enterprises to achieve fairer outcomes for their customers.

Nick holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2011), with concentrations in econometrics, statistics and finance and a B.S. in Economics from George Mason University, High Honors (2001).