Alumni Notes 2015
2003
Colleen (Kreutner) Sanders
I graduated from Cal Poly in 2003 with a degree in mathematics and a minor in statistics. I went on to UCSB to earn my master's in statistics in 2004. From 2004-05, I worked as a statistician at William Wecker and Associates in the Bay Area. I worked on many high profile lawsuits ranging from the car industry to the tobacco industry. In 2005, I decided to change careers and become a high school math teacher. I earned my teaching credential from Cal Poly and have worked at four different high schools. I currently teach at Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills. I have been teaching AP Statistics for the past five years and have the highest pass rates on the AP exam in school history. I am married and have three kids — my oldest is four and I have twins who are one and a half.
2004
Nicole (Walterman) Leighton
I have worked in the aerospace and defense industry in southern California since I graduated in 2004. I currently work for Tecolote Research Inc, where I am a senior cost analyst consulting for the Air Force on the rocket launch vehicle program. I got married in 2010 and just recently had a baby girl in Feb. 2015. We love living by the beach, cruising on our bikes, hiking, traveling and a good craft beer (or two).
2005
Thomas Leung
I'm currently working as an associate director of the analytic department at MarketCast, a market research firm for the entertainment industry based in Los Angeles. Besides the day-to-day clients' deliverables, my primary responsibilities include the career development of junior analysts and innovative methods to analyze data. Recently, our team has developed a few measures beyond the industry's standard that may revolutionize the way we have been interpreting the results. None of these would have happened without the knowledge I obtained from Cal Poly, and I'm glad that I picked the right major for my career.
James Carver
After leaving Cal Poly, I went to Loma Linda School of Public Health to pursue a master's degree. While attending LLU, I had the amazing opportunity to work with an incredible neurosurgeon from Duke University, Dr. Robert Pearlstein. The goal of the research project was the treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy with pencil beam proton radiation therapy. I learned so much from him.
In 2007, I received a master's of public health degree, majoring in biostatistics. Before I actually graduated, I was offered a position as statistical analyst with the Legislation and Research Unit of the County Government of San Bernardino. The Legislation and Research Unit authored many California State bills regarding children and mother’s rights. I was their lead SAS programmer and Geospatial cartographer.
After two years in the cubical and endless meetings, I found life a little boring, and considering my mentor and boss Kathy Watkins was retiring, I decided to make the biggest move of my life. I moved to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to pursue meaningful work in public health.
Within the first year, I landed a position with University Research CO LLC, one of the oldest USAID contractors, under the supervision of Dr. Christophe Grundmann. I was tasked with starting and running a new data analysis unit and was senior technical advisor to the health informatics team leader. Within the first year, we built a team and redesigned the Health Management Information System of Cambodia from standalone silo-style MS Access databases to a web-based database system using PHP and Apache, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and the Department of Planning and Health Information. Due to this change, the overall disease reporting rate from 100 hospitals and over 1,000 health centers increased from 50 percent to 98 percent in the first year.
During my work at University Research Co LLC, I found there were many needs in the international aid community for monitoring and evaluations, statistical analysis, and strategic planning, among others. So I founded Carver Analytics. Carver Analytics fills a void in the areas of statistical analysis, evidence based decision making, monitoring and evaluations and coauthors midterm and year-end evaluations for various international aid agencies in Cambodia.
On a much more personal note, I married a lovely, kind and considerate Khmer women, Seam Sarang. We’ve been married 5 years. Sarang is a physiotherapist and works with children with various disabilities such as cerebral palsy, down syndrome, autism and many others. After getting married, my father-in-law gave my wife and I a 120 square meter plot of land on which we built a small Khmer/Chinese style shop house.
It feels odd to me to write all of you words that sound like egotistical accolades, but what I really want to convey is that studying statistics opened so many wonderful, fulfilling and interesting doors for me. I was not an A student or even worthy of an honorable mention, but with the help of the professors of the Statistics Department I was able to persevere and now have a great life filled with good people and interesting work. I sincerely hope all of you find the same! James Adams-Carver MPH (CarverMPH@gmail.com)
Anne Humphrey
After leaving Cal Poly, I worked as a stay-at-home mom until 2010 when I went to a vocational school and received a certificate in computerized financial accounting. For the last three and a half years, I’ve been working as a senior client service representative for Paychex. I do software and payroll support. In my spare time, I enjoy the outdoors. I have summited seven 14,000 foot peaks, including the tallest mountain in California, Mt. Whiney (via the Mountaineers Route). My two kids are doing fabulous and have been excelling in the Dual Immersion Program, where they have most of their lessons in Spanish. Sean has top marks in science and Katelyn in math. They’ll be ready for Cal Poly in no time!
Alicia Fry
Since graduating from Cal Poly, I earned two master's degrees: one in applied statistics from Cal State Long Beach and another in media from London School of Economics. I worked corporate jobs for five years and after marrying and having children, decided to be a full time homemaker. Life is pretty great these days. When I’m not dedicating all attention toward my kids, I read books, go running and write my fabulously entertaining blog www.BeePlease.blogspot.com.
Amanda (King) Koper
Immediately after graduation, I moved to San Francisco to work for Gap Inc. I spent four years there in inventory management on the Planning and Strategy teams. As much as I loved San Francisco my dream, was to get back to the Central Coast. I took a position at Patagonia and moved to Santa Barbara. I have been at Patagonia for six years and am currently the senior director of global planning and merchandising. I am responsible for all of the inventory in the company, from how much we buy, to where we ship it, to how it is displayed in each location –basically, I do numbers on clothes. My job requires me to travel around the world to work with my global team and I have been fortunate enough to have my husband join me on some of these adventures to Japan, France and Australia. We have a rambunctious 19-month-old son named Alex who joins me every day at work at our on-site daycare, so I get to enjoy being a mom in addition to having a career.
2006
Kristen (Sharp) Esquivias
I am now working at Sephora's corporate office in San Francisco as director of business analytics. And I love it! It's a fun place to work and in the heart of the financial district. My team leverages client data to influence merchandising and marketing strategy and business decisions. We recently welcomed another addition to the family. Ethan was born this past February and his big sister loves smothering him with lots of kisses. These two kids keep us super busy and happier than ever!
Christian Milbank
I recently left the world of actuarial consulting and now work for Dignity Health in San Francisco as a retirement programs consultant. In this role I help manage the company's many retirement plans including the 403(b) plan and the pension plan. In my spare time, I've been using my statistics knowledge to beat my friends in fantasy baseball, and I've been trying to travel more, recently taking trips to Japan and Iceland.
2008
Jenna Maskell
I've been working at Yahoo in Burbank for seven years now post graduation. Last year I was promoted to vendor relationship manager. My team of 30 at Infosys is based in India and is responsible for ad quality review. My husband and I just bought our first home, and we got married last year (April 2014). We love to travel and hope to cross South America or Thailand off our list soon.
Casey Word
Since graduating in 2008, I earned a master's in finance at Vanderbilt in 2009. I held my first job as an actuary in Chattanooga at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee. Missing my family, the weather, and avocados, in 2011, I returned to the Bay Area. Currently, I am working as an actuarial consultant at Milliman's San Francisco health practice. I received my FSA (Fellowship of the Society of Actuaries) in December 2014 and am excited about finally having a life outside of work and studying.
2009
Tyler Benz
It's been a while since I last wrote an update for the department newsletter, and it turns out that this is a great time to do so! To begin, a brief history: I graduated from Cal Poly in 2009 with a statistics degree (psychology minor) and landed a job at Northrop Grumman, located in Monterey, Calif. My official title was operations research analyst, and a large portion of my job consisted of working with customers (majority were Department of Defense affiliated) who were looking to obtain some sort of report or data extract from the enormous data repository that I worked with. I used SAS (on a mainframe, not the colorful PC version) to read in various datasets, slice and dice the data as needed (merges, arrays, tabulates and always prints and freqs) and finally provide the customer with some sort of report based on the customer's requirements. After a while, my company began to give me more responsibilities, such as managing specific monthly data files to ensure that the data we were receiving from outside sources was scrubbed and accurate. I then moved into a business analyst role, where I helped design and build web applications (interactive websites with connected databases to collect information from users) as well as a project management role, where I led a team that created a public website used by transitioning service members and their families (www.DoDTAP.mil). In May 2014, my girlfriend and I moved from Monterey to Denver, Colo. where I worked full time remotely for Northrop Grumman. It was a good year and a great experience being given the opportunity to work from home.
Mary Ellen DeHaven
Professionally I am working for a company called MarketShare and I am working with big data to build attribution models for clients, mostly Williams Sonoma. Attribution models are just statistical models to estimate how much revenue can be attributed to different marketing treatments like catalogs, email promotions, even impressions (those ads on the side of your Facebook). We do a lot of model building in Revolution R, which is very similar to R but made for large datasets. I highly recommend the Cal Poly Statistics Department look into adding this to the R class because I don't think big data is going anywhere. It has slight differences when compared to R but mainly greater computing power.
Personally, I am two weeks away from boarding a plane to Boston. I qualified and am running the Boston marathon this year and am pretty excited!
Hunter Glanz
I was very excited to join the Statistics Department at Cal Poly in fall 2014. It's felt a lot like coming home. It's been a pleasure to teach statistics and computing to new Cal Poly students. I especially enjoyed accompanying some our statistics majors to DataFest in UCLA this year.
Oliver Mead
Living in Mclean, Va., right outside of Washington, D.C. I’m in my fifth year with Elevation Burger (100 percent USDA organic grass-fed beef and 100 percent organic chicken). I’m second in command of the Elevation Burger Supply Chain Department. I’ve added several more countries and U.S. states to my work travel check list.
Lauren Olerich
Since graduating from Cal Poly in 2009, I’ve gained experience in four very different companies. Job 1: data analyst at Northrop Grumman (with Tyler, Peter, Mike, Vinny and lots of other CP Staties) using some SAS while on the criminal investigations team. After one and a half years there, I got the itch to move into tech and took a contract job at LinkedIn on the Ad Inventory & Yield team. I used SQL day in and day out for seven months there, while making sure the campaign managers got their boolean logic correct (among other things). Then, I took an offer from Symantec and joined as a BI analyst supporting NortonCloud’s newest product (think a more secure version of Dropbox). After a year there, my manager left to lead the marketing org at a new SaaS startup (Gainsight) and asked me to follow. I was excited to join a small team and create something from nothing. For the past two years I’ve been running the lead generation program at Gainsight and I manage our entire marketing automation system (Marketo). As employee #25, I feel emotionally invested in the success of Gainsight, and it’s so rewarding to see the company grow (580% so far) and withstand the challenges that face any software startup. I live in Palo Alto, enjoy running half marathons, and occasionally write on Oliver’s Facebook wall.
Daniela Sakamoto
I still live in Los Angeles and work for Amgen. I just finished my master's degree in statistics at Texas A&M this past month. Late last year, I got a new position working in clinical study design where I use predictive modelling and data analytics to design phase two through phase four clinical trials. My role focuses on bringing in historical trial data to predict enrollment and guide trial locations and sample sizes. We are also encompassing innovative and adaptive trial design to make the most efficient trials. This summer, I’m taking a vacation to Croatia! Also, I’m going to the JSM conference (Joint Statistical Meeting) this August in Seattle. If any of my other stat colleagues are going, let me know!
Emily (Tietjen) Shelburne
This year I will complete my fifth year teaching high school students. I am teaching AP statistics and precalculus at Pacheco High School. This past year I started coursework for both an administrative credential as well as a masters in education that I will complete this December. At the moment, I have no set plans for what the future will bring me professionally. However, the most rewarding job in my life currently is raising my happy one-and-a-half-year-old, Olivia, with my husband, Drew.
2010
David Horn
I am director of engineering and analytics for Disney Interactive Labs, leading Disney's San Francisco office. I¹m working on two major products for Disney that will release this fall, and earlier this year released a content recommendation system on disney.com that will show you videos we think you'll like based on what you've previously watched. In my spare time, I'm traveling the world and writing video games.
Andy Kaplan
I am still in the same position that I was during the last update. I am a biostatistician at UCLA providing statistical support for the Department of Radiology as well as managing and analyzing data from clinical trials. I’ve been at this position for three years and have found it very rewarding. I have since moved to West L.A. and within walking distance of my workplace and the UCLA campus.
Andy Zbin
I live in San Jose and have been working for LinkedIn for the past two years. I am currently a sales operations and strategy associate working on revenue forecasting, quota/territory management, and strategic growth of our new customer acquisition.
2011
Emily Conklin
I am currently working for SmithGeiger, a market research company in Westlake Village, Calif. Our company works in the media industry, helping our clients — mainly TV networks — to better understand their brand and their audience. I have been here for the past three and a half years and was recently promoted to production team manager. Our team converts research results into visually pleasing and understandable reports, so it takes data analysis and manipulation as well as design skills. I've realized that I really like combining my statistics background with design, and I'm hoping to take some graphic design classes in the future. Outside of work, I enjoy playing with my dog, hiking, not watching the Dodgers on TV (thanks Time Warner), cooking and brewing beer.
Juliana Fajardo
I moved to Denver in July 2014 and began a new adventure and chapter of my life in the Mile High City. I have been working on my master's degree in public administration at the University of Colorado, Denver since fall 2013 and will finish my program this December; Iam pursuing a dual concentration in nonprofit management and environmental policy, management, and law. I have had the pleasure of meeting some amazing people through my program, university, and the community over the last year, making my experience out in Colorado great so far. I currently have an internship with the Development Team at Conservation Colorado, which is an environmental advocacy and policy-driven nonprofit organization. I also have a part time job as the assistant to the development director at Summer Scholars, a local nonprofit that supports kids in need through literacy instruction and enrichment programs.
For my capstone project, I will be conducting research with Earth Force, a nonprofit that empowers kids to be active citizens through learning how to improve the environment andtheir communities. I am excited to dive back into statistics during the rest of my program.
A couple of fun facts: Last year I had the privilege of taking a study abroad intensive course in Costa Rica for my program, which focused on sustainable development and adaptive resource management. This trip was absolutely incredible and I am happy to have gained such invaluable experiences from it. As for my move to a new state, I have enjoyed the natural beauty that Colorado has to offer and I plan to hike my first "14-er" this summer!
Jennifer Gildner
I am currently finishing up my master's in biostatistics at UCLA. As a graduate studentresearcher, I have had the opportunity to work with Medicare and Medicaid data to assess quality of care for HIV/AIDS patients. For my master's report, I will be investigating the effectiveness of an educational intervention for childhood cancer patients and their families. I'm looking forward to next steps after graduation.
Jewels Lee
It's been four years since I graduated from Cal Poly and things couldn't be better. After finishing a master's degree in statistics at UCLA, I've been working at Gap Inc. as a senior analyst in customer analytics for about one and a half years. I've been learning new things every day, and I've recently moved into working in big data/hdfs/hive. Really cool stuff. (I originally worked in SAS for my first year.) Besides that, I've been working on my wanderlust bucket list. Last year we climbed to the top of Machu Pichu and currently we are in the process of planning a beach-filled, jungle-filled adventure in Thailand. I've also been taking acoustic guitar lessons and can finally play a full song!
2012
Josh Beemer
I am currently completing a master's degree in statistics at San Diego State University and will be graduating in May. I work as a graduate research assistant in the Analytics Studies and Institutional Research Department at SDSU. I work with student data to understand student retention, transfer patterns and graduation rates. I help investigate where students who were accepted to SDSU but did not enroll, decide to go to college. Additionally, I work with a learning analytics group on campus that does research on course redesigns. This research has become the focus of my master’s thesis. As for the future, next year I will be starting a doctorate in a joint program in computational statistics at SDSU and Claremont Graduate University.
Jenna (Colavincenzo) Carlson
I have just finished my third year as a biostatistics doctorate student at the University of Pittsburgh. I have passed my qualifying exam (insert fireworks here) and begun work on my dissertation with Dr. Eleanor Feingold on rare variant tests for cleft lip and palate using family data. Even more exciting than that, last summer I got married! My husband, Ben, and I love Pittsburgh and keep busy with the vibrant city life here.
Neal Grantham
I am just finishing my third year as a statistics doctorate student at North Carolina State. Having wrapped up all course requirements, I will transition to a full-time research assistantship come fall 2015. Since the last alumni update, my work with Brian Reich has migrated away from air pollution modeling in favor of spatial Bayesian nonparametric methods for identifying the source of dust samples via their microbial DNA fingerprint, with applications to forensic biology and archaeology. I owe Andrew Schaffner a debt of gratitude for sparking my interest in spatial statistics — and Allan Rossman too, of course, for the Bayesian encouragement.
This summer, however, I will put this research on hold to work as a summer intern at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., where I will join the Flight Deck Interface Technologies group. During my 10-week internship, I will serve as a statistical consultant to several aerospace engineers and flight experts with the goal of applying machine learning algorithms to biofeedback data collected on pilots — e.g., heart rate monitoring, eye-tracking —to classify and improve pilot performance in critical flight scenarios.
In less academic news, I have begun training for Raleigh's City of Oaks marathon in November, and I volunteer weekly as an on-air DJ at NC State's non-profit, student-run radio station 88.1 WKNC.
Samantha Law
I recently moved back to the SLO area and started back at Mindbody about a month ago and am now working as a sr. marketing analyst. For the past year, I had been living in Orange County and worked as a business intelligence analyst at a marketing agency there. It was great consulting experience, and I was able to travel to some pretty fun U.S. cities (Austin, Portland, and Vancouver to name a few) visiting various clients. Although I really loved my job there, I just could not get used to the traffic or the rat race of the city. I missed the SLO lifestyle, and luckily for me, I was fortunate enough to be able to boomerang back here. As far as personal news, not much new there either, except that my Bernese mountain dog is now two years old and tipping the scale at 90 pounds.
Chelsea Lofland
I'm finishing up my third year as a doctorate student at UC Santa Cruz. My research focuses on a Bayesian framework for testing hypotheses about political legislators' preferences. Currently I am creating an R package to distribute these methods publicly. I am a graduate student instructor for a biostatistics lab at UCSC and will be a biostatistics intern at Axio this summer in Seattle, working with clinical trials. I also continue my activity in the SAS community with volunteering and presenting at WUSS and SAS Global Forum, including an upcoming presentation of how to code an MCMC algorithm in SAS that I will present at the next SGF in Dallas. I live walking distance from the beach, so that fulfills its purpose of distracting me, and I just joined an inner tube water polo team because, well, it's Santa Cruz and that's what you do.
Diana Said
I'm currently working at Safeway as a net landed cost analyst, which pretty much means that I try to optimize the warehousing and transportation of our product. Before that I was a forecast analyst. Currently perusing my master's degree as well at CSU East Bay, which is close to work and very convenient. As for any personal stuff, just living in an apartment in the Bay Area with my cat.
Kurtis Voris
For the last two years, I have been pursuing my master's degree at San Diego State, joined by two Cal Poly stats alumni: Josh Beemer and Steven Legore. It has been enjoyable to share my statistical journey with these guys. During grad school, I worked as an SAS programmer in the pharmaceutical industry, joined by Scott Davis and Tyler Plevney from our Stats 150 class. It also made me very happy to spend time with so many Cal Poly stats alumni at the WUSS conference last year in Las Vegas.
A few classes at SDSU stimulated an interest in the data science field, so I now work at a real estate investing website company called HomeUnion and create data products like "neighborhood desirability score" and "investimate score" using multiple languages including R and Python but excluding SAS. I work in Irvine and will move to Newport Beach with my little dog, Porter, and girlfriend, Chelsey (also a Cal Poly grad), after SDSU graduation. Please contact me if you will be in the area!
2013
Hector Herrera
I'm a graduate student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis pursuing a master's degree in biostatistics. In conjunction with the program I intern for both BJC Healthcare as a health informatics analyst and as a biostatistician for an endocrinology office on the medical campus that specializes in diabetes research, particularly physiological responses to the brain when diabetic patients experience hypoglycemic episodes. All the while, I continue to work remotely for a San Luis Obispo tech start-up as a data scientist evaluating search engine optimization firms. It shouldn't come as a surprise to those who know me that I like to keep my plate very full. Outside of class and work, I'm trying to take in everything St. Louis has to offer during my stay here. If you find yourself in the area I'd be glad to show you around or give you suggestions of what to do, eat, see, etc.
Debbie Huang
I will graduate in June from UCLA with a master's in Biostatistics and planning to moveback to San Francisco. I am currently working on a project for my master's report involving analysis of cluster-randomized longitudinal data and learning all about multivariate random effects models. I have a newfound interest in machine learning and want to pursue a career as a data scientist in San Francisco. In my spare time, I've learned to code in SQL and Python, and I love to take my corgi to the dog park.
Lydia Liang
After graduating from Cal Poly, I worked for an engineering team at Autodesk as a business systems analyst and learned a lot of SQL. Then I decided I didn't want to be in the corporate world, so now I am currently at a start-up called Westfield Labs in San Francisco as a data QA analyst. Half my job is ensuring that reports and dashboards are reporting the correct data, and the other half is ensuring that the data we are collecting is what we really want. I am using a lot of Javascript to do most of my work, and it's a lot of getting into the trenches of raw data. I see myself going back to school very soon, but in the meantime, I am doing God's work in the Bay Area and overseas in South East Asia (I'll be going to Thailand!). Also, I'll be releasing a rap video about the Gospel — what?!
Greg Williams
After graduating from Cal Poly in 2013, I embarked on a month-long trip to Europe to see the sites and take in the culture. Shortly after this trip, I began my professional career working for Teradata, a data warehousing and big data company. I have recently relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to work with different companies in various industries as an information technology consultant on data science and business intelligence projects.
2014
Henry Bongiovi
I am currently working in Honolulu, Hawaii at Hawaiian Airline’s corporate office as an analyst. May will mark my sixth month working here, and I have the Cal Poly Statistics department to thank for that.
Ashley Chandler
After graduating in June, I began working as an actuarial analyst for Mercer in San Francisco. I am currently focused on employee health and benefits consulting, working with large employers to evaluate risk and manage the cost of their health and welfare plans. I am continuing to pursue my ASA and am preparing for my fourth exam. In my free time, I like to explore as much of the city as possible and fantasize about rent prices dropping.
Samantha Dellinger
After graduating in June 2014, I went straight to work at a startup called LifeStreet in San Francisco’s financial district. I am currently a media analyst on our Revenue Operations team and am so fortunate to have ended up where I am. After being with the company for about nine months now, I still learn something new every day and continue to be overwhelmed by the support and encouragement of my coworkers. Although I am not currently using any statistics in my daily work, I brought with me the analytical tools and familiarity with numbers that Cal Poly teaches so well. The hands-on experiences that were provided to me throughout my four years in statistics at Cal Poly made me believe that I would be able to rise to the occasion and tackle any obstacle that came my way when facing graduation and finding my niche in the real world. The professors and department as a whole left a lasting impression on me, and I will forever be grateful for the tools they gave me that allow me to succeed.
Ariana (Audi) Montes
I am currently a professional services associate (soon to be configuration engineer) at Apttus in San Mateo, Calif. I absolutely love working for this company and cannot thank the Statistics Department enough for preparing me for this professional role and instilling confidence in my technical abilities.
I am living in San Mateo with my fiancé, Chris — coincidentally also a recent grad from the Statistics Department — and our dog, Emma. In our free time, we like exploring new restaurants and taking Emma for walks.
Julia Schedler
After graduating in June 2014, I continued working for the SLO-based start up that I had worked for throughout my senior year. I left that job in August when I moved to Houston to attend Rice University for my doctorate in statistics. So far, the program has been challenging but fulfilling. I will be spending the summer studying for my qualifying exam in August. On a more personal note, I have been enjoying my transition into a vegan lifestyle and, at risk of becoming a complete grad student stereotype, adopted a wonderful cat named Lily.
Allison Wiener
I am working at Clorox in Pleasanton as a solution engineer/developer focusing on data integration in the Business Intelligence team of IT. I have been analyzing Facebook data on the side with colleagues from Facebook, and work alongside the data scientist of our team who says “a data scientist is better at statistics than any software engineer and better at programming than any statistician.” I’m well on my way! Besides work, living in the East Bay is fun, and while I haven’t gotten married or had children yet, I did go to Peru recently with my boyfriend and others, one of whom was also a Cal Poly statistics grad! Small world. Hope all is well in the Statistics Department and thanks for everything.
Dana Williamson
I am working for Campus Crusade for Christ as an intern, currently in San Luis Obispo, and I will be going overseas next year with them.
