Starting a Conversation about Data Careers

What kind of College student should study data analytics? All of them, according to Eric Edell, C’99, and Randy Winn, PAR’28. The two are co-founders and managing partners at 22C Capital, an investment firm focused on helping companies improve their data, analytics, and technology capabilities. Edell and Winn are committed to encouraging students in the College to explore career pathways in data science and gain skills that will be necessary no matter their future fields.

To that end, they’ve been working with the School’s Data Driven Discovery Initiative (DDDI), co-directed by Greg Ridgeway, Rebecca W. Bushnell Professor and Chair of Criminology and Professor of Statistics and Data Science, and Bhuvnesh Jain, Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences and co-director of the Penn Center for Particle Cosmology. They joined forces with Penn Arts & Sciences’ alumni engagement staff and the College Office to convene a College Alumni Mentoring Series (CAMS) event about Careers in Data Science.

The event, which took place at the end of March, brought a full house of students to hear and ask questions of a panel of professionals organized by Edell and Winn. This included Melissa Honour, Head of Product Innovation at Blue Shield of California; Tara Thiagarajan, founder and chief scientist at Sapien Labs; and Christen Smith, President of Service Lines and Solutions at LMI.

Over the course of the evening, the panelists described their career paths and how they used data in their work, spoke about the current state of the field, made predictions about the future of data analytics and AI, and answered student questions. Topics ranged from alternative energy, consumer products, and retail to finance, nonprofits, government, and healthcare. “Every industry needs help with data and analytics. As a result, people who know how to think about the relevant data and how to solve the related challenges are in high demand,” says Winn.

Getting students who aren’t in Engineering or Wharton to be more interested in data analytics resonates with Edell and Winn, who both had liberal arts educations, majoring in neuroscience and in government and international affairs, respectively. The other panelists also came from largely non-engineering or business backgrounds and shared a variety of expertise and perspectives.

“We wanted to bring real-world experts to act as a mirror for the students as they think about their future careers, the relevance of what they’re doing, and the importance of understanding data science,” says Edell, who mentioned that everyone they asked to be a panelist agreed immediately: “Everybody was super excited.”

Winn says their goal was to answer questions, be a resource, and demystify data. “Given the interaction with the students both during and after the event, we feel like it was a real success,” he says.

“And really fun,” adds Edell. “The students were really into it, asked smart questions, and came at it with a variety of perspectives.”

Edell and Winn say they plan to continue working with DDDI to bring a variety of voices to the table, especially as technology continues to progress so quickly. “The DDDI Data Science minor can help students understand the right questions to ask, what data is required to answer those questions, and how to bring the right tools to bear,” says Edell. “We are convinced this will allow graduates to add tangible value in any area of academia or industry.”