Chavez Cheong double majored in economics and computer science, with a certificate in decision sciences at Duke University. He first joined the American Predatory Lending Data+ team in the summer of 2021 where he worked alongside Eli Levine to extract Mortgage Enforcement Action (MEA) text from Ohio and Massachusetts, developed a Natural Language Processing (NLP) topic modelling workflow to categorize misdemeanors in MEAs, and analyzed the data to better understand trends in mortgage enforcement laws and practices in different states leading up to the Mortgage Lending crisis. He continued the project as co-leads for the data team working on extracting more MEAs from states and expanding the methodology to analyze multiple other states, producing additional state analysis reports (Virginia, Washington and Arizona), alongside a white paper detailing the difficulties of working with state-level data. He also worked alongside the data team to create an interactive Tableau dashboard for site visitors to explore the data on their own.
