Thurston Powers

AI Engineer @ Mercatus Center

Nov 2023 - Current

• Leading a newly formed AI team
• Architecting and building cloud based solutions: RAG chatbots, AI powered tools, APIs, event driven pipelines.
• Designing, maintaining, and optimizing databases ranging from RDS Postgres, Neptune, to DynamoDB

Data Engineer @ Mercatus Center

Oct 2021 - Nov 2023

• Architecting, building, and managing AWS based solutions.
• Developing data pipelines from web scrapers, through QA processes, across databases, and to a publicly accessible API.
• Presenting data to internal and external audiences using BI tools to communicate key findings.

Policy Analyst @ Mercatus Center

Nov 2018 - Oct 2021

• Developing data collection and analysis processes for projects like RegData in AWS
• Managing a relational database
• Presenting data to internal and external audiences using BI tools to communicate key findings.

Research Manager @ ALEC

Aug 2018 - Nov 2018

• Planned and managed annual publications.
• Authored and coauthored studies, briefs, op-eds, and providing testimony on tax and fiscal issues in the North East.
• Assisted with tax and fiscal task force events and organization.

Legislative Analyst @ ALEC

Jun 2017 - Aug 2018

• Authored and coauthored studies, briefs, op-eds, and providing testimony on tax and fiscal issues in the North East.
• Responsible for legislative outreach and support in the North East.
• Assisted with tax and fiscal task force events and organization.

Policy Analyst @ Yankee Institute

Jun 2015 - Jan 2017

• Authored and coauthored studies, op-eds, policy briefs.
• Collected, organized, and visualized descriptive and inferential statistics.
• Assisted in the organization and operation of private and public events.