My Data Journey

I graduated from the University of Maine in 2016 with a degree in Chemical Engineering. I entered the Pulp and Paper industry fresh out of college. The first year or so, I didn't have access to a lot of data, though when I got some data in Excel, boy did I love making it tell a story. Excitingly, my next job as a Process Engineer allowed me much greater access to the companies data base, though I hadn't yet found the joys of being directly connected to the databases. Any data I couldn't pull through an Excel Add-In with PI datalink I had to go through IT so they could query the data. When I got the data, I had a field day. I would make presentations, use statistics to find correlations, and provided solutions to business questions. Using this type of data I was able to improve the process and provide annualized savings of over $1.2 million per year.

After leaving that job to move south with my wife, and starting considering a career change. I took a SQL for Data Science class and fell in love with the access it could give me to data, as well as allowing me to code (something I've enjoyed doing since high school). I didn't have quite enough time or skill in the matter to go about applying for jobs, so I found one that fit my background at the time. This time I found a job in the Textile industry as a Process Engineer.

But I couldn't let go of my new found skills, so I took the Google Data Analytics Course offered by Google and Coursera and pushed myself to finish the class in just 2 months. With this, I was able to learn even more effectively how to use SQL, R, RStudio, and Tableau to get data, create compelling visualizations, and answer business questions.

Shortly after that, I was given access to my work's SQL database and started being able to query the database myself and get the data I needed in order to complete business tasks. I love data, data analysis and data visualization and I now have the skills to do just that with SQL, R, and Tableau.

In the end, this passion and drive for getting data to properly solve business tasks by exploring, cleaning, and presenting data is what led me to decide on a career change. My previous experiences have built a strong foundation of data analysis. Between that and my course work with programming languages, I'm ready to make this change.