Cathy O'Neil is a mathematician and the author of the blog mathbabe.org. O'Neil attended the University of California at Berkeley and then went on to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University. She taught mathematics at both MIT and Barnard College, doing research in arithmetic algebraic geometry. In 2007, O'Neil left academia to work in the finance industry as a data quant. Disenchanted with finance, she joined the Occupy Wall Street movement, particularly the Alternative Banking Group. In 2016, her book "Weapons of Math Destruction" was published.