As a Business Program Manager at Meta, I have had the opportunity to work with multiple cross functional teams in the Family of Apps Growth team to help create, certify and publish metrics for both internal and external reporting. Working with our data science, data engineering, finance and legal teams have been a wonderful experience since I get to work with so many people with different backgrounds for a common goal. Working at a large, high exposure company also has brought several of my skills to the forefront, such as proper planning for long-term projects that require massive amounts of flexibility, as we always have to shift to internal priorities or external requirements such as privacy boards or market conditions. Working with speed and precision can be difficult, but perfecting how to do that through a great company like Meta has made all the difference!

In order to accelerate my career and have as many learning experiences as possible, I accepted a role as a Data Science focused Project Leader at Headstorm, a boutique consulting firm specializing in custom tech product builds across multiple industries. In my role, I helped sell projects, organize teams and deliver end-to-end solutions for our clients. Some of the projects included:- Transforming data practices at a large fitness company through a data lake ecosystem through Amazon Web Services.- Creating a one-of-a-kind multi-portal curbside management platform, allowing for city planners to create allocated parking spots that consumers could then reserve for small interactions with local businesses during COVID- Conducting a strategic and technological assessment of an international AgTech company to validate the acquisition of a separate company- Conducting a strategic assessment of tech-forward financial company to determine level of effort and constraints of custom internal workflow tool- Constructing an API translation service for a home construction company- Delivering multiple custom integrations for a life sciences research platform, working with cross-functional teams to identify product functionalityIn addition to project work, I helped build several cornerstones of the internal operations of the company as well. I played a major part in leading our Data Science Special Interest Group, our Headstorm U talker series, and our Culture Corp meetings. I was also elected into our “Quantum Orange” program, allowing me to work with other high-performers at the company to create and incubate new product offerings that could then be pitched to new clients. All of these experiences helped me understand the amount of effort, integrity and passion that goes into start and building a small company. Headstorm also taught me how to think efficiently and to perform under the pressure of client expectations.

With my promotion to Associate Director - Statistics, I was now responsible for the creation and execution of a four person team to implement many of the data science opportunities I vetted in my previous position. This team was ultimately responsible for over 25 projects, with the annual cost savings of the team reaching over $10M over my tenure of management (1.5 years). Projects ranged from analyzing cell traffic date to make more accurate tax reports, automating analytic functions to save time throughout the Finance org, and building top layer machine learning suggestions to assist call center employees with sentiment analysis. In addition to my main work, I created a lecture series that promoted emerging technology and data analytics educations through 1 hour sessions once a month that feature two different presentations. Additionally, I was nominated to participate in the "Finance Rock Star" program, an optional case competition for high performers in the Finance organization. My group of 7 people ended up winning the competition due to our analytical research and creative problem solving to the business question. The business proposal we also suggested ended up being adopted back into the business as well.Finally, I helped create the Data Principle learning path at AT&T, which was a curated list of trainings and classes that would empower participants to engage in a career shift or enhance their current career with data analytics education. I love helping people along their career goals, so this was an easy thing for me to engage in and I loved being able to help produce it.

In a shift from technical work to operations duties, I used my previously built data science skills to evaluate and prioritize projects across a wide spectrum of uses cases to modernize the current state of the Finance Shared Services organization. Many of these use cases involved building more flexible databases, automating pipelines and shifting work done in Excel to more optimized low-code or no-code solutions. I was also the thought leader around emerging technology within the Workforce Modernization group, which meant I was responsible with explaining blockchain, AI and other newer technologies or concepts to different business groups with the intent of partnering on like solutions that would benefit both groups.One specific action I did in this role was help with a discovery exercise on how AT&T would accept bill payments through cryptocurrency. This required a team of 11 people from across the company to vet the idea from a technical level (was it possible for AT&T) and business operations level (did it make sense for AT&T to do). The team built an example architecture, vetting possible partners, and did a full financial analysis on how this would be profitable or accessible for the company. The project ended with a presentation to a board of senior vice presidents.

After I was offered a full-time position with the Chief Data Office, I continued deepening my skill and appreciation for data science and engineering work. Outside of one-off understand work with our cell network and other business procedures, I worked on two main projectsAs part of our Not-Profit Outreach group, I was assigned to help with a non-profit called Together for Safer Roads to analyze voice data and traffic tendencies within Atlanta, Georgia. Specifically, we analyzed traffic tendencies over a week of time to draw correlations between crash data, along with a multitude of over factors. I helped with creating the interactive model to find statistically significator factors, as well as creating a Shiny dashboard to visualize our findings and allow it to be interacted with.The other project I worked on was with the Fleet Operations group, analyzing installation and other job data to find out how to optimize driver paths and work schedules. This made sure our employees could execute installations of multiple kinds within a more reliable time window reported to our customers. The end result was a higher Net Promotor Score (NPS) in certain categories as well as a 20% bump in accuracy of our installation timings.

During my internship with AT&T, I worked for and alongside different teams doing data engineering and data science work with the overall view of preparing data sets for deeper analysis. I worked with the Fleet Operations group on driver statistics and the Non-Profit Outreach group on survey creation and execution. Primarily, though, I worked with the Innovation and Workspace group on a study of innovative behavior that could be measured and improved upon within AT&T workspaces. I was in charge of setting up the experiment, identifying and analyzing primary sources of data, building a predictive model based on behavioral tendencies and presenting the report out live to the Chief Data Office as my capstone project for my internship. The project would continue after my internship into maintaining an interactive product where people could see their scores and improve their innovative behaviors through different internal tools and experiences.

During my Master's degree, I was given the opportunity to be 1 of 3 teaching assistants for first-year UT Southwestern doctoral students, where I assisted the professor in teaching introductory statistics. I conducted solo office hours for students to come ask questions on homework or class material. I also assisted in grading homework and other assignments, providing feedback to students to help them learn and become more connected with the material

As the final evolution of my work the past two years in the New Student Orientation office, I was in charge of supervising the work conducted by the AARO leaders and Mustang Corral Directors of that year for the incoming class of 2019. In my role, I created programming to educate the orientation leaders in prep for the summer orientation sessions. This programming involved working with multiple campus groups and Student Activities leaders to create sessions that would best prepare the chosen orientation leaders to be the main points of contact of the SMU school system during their time in the role.During sessions, I helped to coordinate tasks or plan ahead for future orientation sessions. I was always the first line of defense when issues were raised with students or their families, as well as helped programming get back on track when we were behind schedule.

As the Student Activities Assistant, I acted as the first point of contact for new visitors into the Student Activities office and helped answer basic questions or coordinate answers for more advanced asks. When not addressing visitors, I assisted in different Student Activities ask from different directors in the department.

Along with the help of the New Student Orientation office, I worked with 5 other individuals to create and execute the programming for a 3 day, 2 night orientation event for the incoming class of 2018, which consisted of over 1500 students. These students were taken through academic, school spirit, and DEI conversations through the help of an additional 90+ student leaders on campus. Specifically, I was in charge of organizing transportation to and from the camp and for overall logistics during the event, such as student leader education, job assignments and follow through of programming. The experience helped me dissolve large-scale events into smaller milestone based work, a key start to my program management career

During a summer in college, I had the opportunity to serve as an AARO leader, which is the first point of contact that many first-year students have before entering SMU. The main responsibilities included facilitating small group discussions on campus life and academic work, but also included educating new students on SMU spirit/traditions, mentoring throughout the school year, and dealing with non-engaged students. It was a wonderful opportunity (only 10 students are given the job every year), and helped me become more connected with my inclusive leadership skills