Background

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I’ve been in Marketing since 2003. That’s taken on various and sundry flavors over the years but, with little deviation, I’ve tried to stick to Marketing and Analytics. Below is a brief overview of stuff I’ve done and where.


Official Jobs

Senior Decision Scientist: 2017 – Present
Comet Global Consulting, A Merkle Company – The Decisioning Experts
Joining Comet Global Consulting’s team of real-time decisioning experts was a big choice and one I’m very excited about. I am bringing data science (called decision science here) to an industry rife with need for it. From customer lifetime value to retention modeling to marketing attribution, this is the frontier where it all comes together on the fly. I look forward to digging in to the data and business problems to be solved for our top-tier clients.

Senior Data Scientist / CRM Strategist / Business Analyst: 2013 – 2017
Aginity LLC – Big Data + Big Math = Customer Intimacy at Scale
Aginity Amp™ is a revolutionary piece of software to reshape how data and analytic management can be done. It provides efficiency in data warehousing, ETL/ELT, data preparation, and reporting in orders of magnitude. For nearly four years, it was my task to bring this game-changing technology to world-class clients and transform how data science and business intelligence teams did their daily jobs.

As part of the inner workings of Aginity, I provided thought leadership on software functionality and the product roadmap. I was part of multiple implementation teams guiding data architecture to achieve more usable logical and physical data models for the business. This role spanned data architecture, business analysis, data science, business intelligence, marketing, and more to bridge the gap between data and end users. It also pushed me into the technical deep end of massively parallel processing platforms and Big Data on both Hortonworks and Cloudera Hadoop clusters.

Director of Strategic Services: 2011 – 2013
Senior Marketing Strategist: 2011
Client Marketing Strategist: 2009 – 2010
Kobie Marketing – Customer Retention Solutions and Loyalty Program Management
I joined Kobie at a time of growth and when it was crucial that we prove the value of the programs we designed and ran to our clients. That was my main task. Analyze what was going on, why, and how we could improve performance. To that end, I helped our clients achieve tremendous gains in member participation, engagement, spend, earnings, retention, and all the other lovely KPIs that go into loyalty.

Management changed often during my tenure in the Strategic Services group (now called Decision Sciences) and I was eventually offered the position of Director. As the Director of a small team, I developed a plan for what it would take to build Strategic Services to an analytics powerhouse while also balancing business development efforts and day-to-day operational involvement across the organization. I also spear-headed consulting engagements using analytics as the front-runner for larger strategic discussions.

Sr Credit Policy & Risk Analyst: 2007 – 2008
HSBC – United States Mortgage Risk Division of Global Bank
I went to the dark side and found that not only do they have cookies, they also have SAS. This was where I first encountered the data step in all its glory. At the time, I was using it to tackle mortgage default aging problems and supporting the loan modification team in proactively contacting customers at risk of defaulting. We were truly ahead of the curve when it came to dealing with mortgage account aging.

While I was not a great fit for for the financial industry, I would recommend HSBC as an employer. They have competitive salaries, fantastic benefits, international opportunities, nearly unlimited growth potential (depending on where you’re willing to relocate), and they truly do care about providing service to their customers.

Statistician: 2006 – 2007
Hill, Holliday – Relationship Marketing Department of Advertising Agency

Publisher Account Analyst: 2005 – 2006
Commission Junction – Online Affiliate Marketing Marketplace
The Publisher side of the house in affiliate marketing are all those websites, apps, and so forth who promote the products and services of others for a commission. My role as Publisher Account Analyst was to work closely with the Publisher Account Managers to identify areas of opportunity. This took the form of finding publishers who had great potential but did not yet have access to the best deals, identifying advertisers that filled a niche in a publisher’s advertising space, and pushing the Publisher Account Managers to increase commissions for their portfolios. I did a lot of reporting and data synthesis, much of which became part of the standard online suite of reports when they were redesigned. Behind the scenes, there was also a fair bit of forecasting to ensure that Publisher Account Managers had goals to meet that were realistically optimistic rather than gimmes.

Business Analyst: 2003 – 2004
deNovis, Inc. – Healthcare Insurance Decisioning Platform (now defunct)
Being a Business Analyst was probably the best first-job-out-of-college I could have asked for. deNovis was building an application for health insurance providers to manage pretty much all aspects of their business. Providers, suppliers, members, claims adjudication… all kinds of stuff.

Without knowing what a database was or did, I was mapping a logical model that became data structure. I was also defining and documenting tons of complex business rules, mapping item definitions and all the minutiae that would eventually drive me batty when it wasn’t provided properly. This experience left me with a different way of approaching documentation, skills in business and data analysis, and the sneaky feeling that this would crop up again later.


Serial Entrepreneurship

Responsible Adult Club – Life Skills Blog for Young Adults
In early 2017, I quietly started a blog primarily for younger adults and teens aimed at helping them be responsible adults. The blog covers topics from careers and finance to cleaning and mending. My hope is to grow the club into a community of individuals all striving to be the best, most successful versions of themselves.

Growth Nexus – Small Business Marketing Consulting
The difference in effectiveness that a marketer can have between a large organization and a small business is striking. I’ve worked with local shops for several years to help build effective, cost-efficient marketing strategies to meet their needs. I firmly believe that small business means big growth to the economy. That is why Growth Nexus has continued to thrive.

Using a combination of online marketing techniques, direct marketing, and local networking, Growth Nexus provides customized marketing plans for small business. I leverage my analytics experience to optimize websites, paid advertisement, and offline channels as a means of marketing mix modeling in small data.

Ametryne Associates – Transcription Service
I consider this my “accidental business”. Run from 2003 to 2005, Ametryne provided transcription, editing, and some translation services to customers across the globe. At its height, there were about two dozen independent contractors working from home throughout the United States and dishing up some of the best quality out there.

With increasing offshore price pressure, an inefficient operational setup, and conflicting priorities (full-time job and Masters program), I decided to close the company in 2005. There are still days when I think about ways I could revise and revive this business… then I remember the operational nightmare it was, take some Advil, and go on with my day.


Academics

Masters in International Economics and Finance
Concentration in International Finance
Brandeis University International Business School

Certificate in Applied Statistics
Not completed
Penn State University

Bachelor of Science in Economics
Syracuse University

Online Coursework
Game Theory – Statement of Accomplishment – Coursera Class offered by Stanford University

A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior – Statement of Accomplishment – Coursera Class offered by Duke University (in Behavioral Economics)

R Programming – Statement of Accomplishment – Coursera Class Offered by Johns Hopkins University

Python for Everybody – Statement of Accomplishment – Coursera Specialization Offered by University of Michigan