Analytics Leader and Data Engineer
My journey into analytics leadership was not linear.
In college, I majored in Biology with an emphasis on botany and environmental science. A minor in art led me to digital content creation and teaching Adobe courses at the local community college. Recognition of my skills at the college caught the attention of area businesses seeking branding and design services. What began as a creative side hustle evolved into a decade-long entrepreneurial journey that would ultimately guide my career toward product analytics and technical leadership.
Over the ten years I operated my web development company, I served more than 100 clients, ranging from local businesses to six mid-to-large enterprises and one Fortune 500 company. While building digital experiences for clients, I became increasingly fascinated by user behavior – understanding which features drove engagement, where users dropped off, and what data patterns revealed about decision-making.
This curiosity, combined with my foundation in technology, business operations, and client services, evolved into building comprehensive analytics frameworks that shaped product strategy, including a year-long contract leading user analytics for the U.S. Census Bureau.
While advancing my expertise in statistics and AI at the Colorado School of Mines, I met the AMD team at a career fair and interviewed for an analyst role. During that conversation, I walked my now-boss through the data architecture the engineering team would require. He offered me a higher data engineering role instead. I had never held that title, but I had been building databases and Python pipelines for years.
Job titles are poor definitions of the work we achieve. Be open minded about your future, and intensely focused on what you want to achieve.