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Jeffrey Ma

The Real Life Inspiration for the Film 21 and Co-Founder

As a member of the MIT Blackjack Team, Jeff Ma created an ingenious method for counting cards - using talent, creativity, math, and teamwork to win millions in Vegas. (Card-counting, by the way, is not illegal; casinos just don’t like it). Ma is the subject of the best-selling book Bringing Down the House and the hit movie, 21, which topped the box office in its first two weeks. He has since co-founded Citizen Sports, a revolutionary sports media company, and become a much-sought after corporate speaker. Ma shows companies how to harness the power of numbers to make better bottom line business decisions; decisions that, often, are the difference between winning and losing. At the blackjack table, and in the world of pro sports, Jeff Ma entered very emotional, "gut-feel" environments and achieved success by not only gathering the right data and analyzing it rationally, but also having the courage to follow through on the sometimes counterintuitive answers it provided. With stories drawn from sports and from Vegas, he helps you better visualize how a more rigorous approach to numbers will improve results in everything from sales to HR to strategy. Drawn from unique personal experiences, some examples of Ma’s incredible tales are recovering from losing $100,000 in two hands of blackjack, teaching Kevin Spacey how to count cards, and advising the Trail Blazers whether to pick Greg Oden or Kevin Durant.A charismatic speaker, Ma talks about teamwork and innovative metrics in a way that will make you reevaluate how you assess talent, find undervalued assets and measure the true worth of your business. Best of all, you don't need to be a calculus nerd to implement his winning strategies. By eschewing emotion and honing in on hard facts and results, Ma has helped usher in what Newsweek calls "a new age of numbers in corporate America."