Building a Door — My Data Science Journey
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” — Milton Berle, legendary comedian and actor
Upon graduating from Temple University with a B.S. in Sport & Recreation Management and a minor in General Business Studies, I fully expected to proceed down the path of my dream career in the sport industry. After all, I already had five years of professional experience under my belt with organizations including the Philadelphia Eagles, Temple University Football, and Philadelphia Flyers. Over that period, I developed a widely versatile sport and business skill-set that helped me land a statistics/football operations/player personnel position with the National Football League headquarters. All of my hard work and the countless hours spent positioning myself for success had paid off, or so it seemed.
Despite my unyielding commitment to my job at the NFL, the realization set in that the opportunity for advancement there would take substantial time while the cost of living in New York City was becoming exorbitant for me. Even with the myriad of connections I had made in the sport world, that next job progression never happened. I certainly could have complained about not being given the opportunity to prove myself after all the years and effort I had invested in this profession, but instead I committed for the long haul and chose to start building a door. I knew I needed to better myself, so I moved back home, got a job in finance, and began my search for a program and school to pursue an advanced degree in data science and analytics.
As a numbers-driven person with a high aptitude for analytical thinking, I felt I could make a difference in this discipline. With experience in statistical and analytical-related positions, I strongly believed venturing down the emerging and evolving Data Science path was the way to go. After a brief adjustment period, in a little over a year, I achieved a Master of Data Science with a specialization in Analytics & Modeling from Northwestern University. While there, I learned the critical skills needed to succeed in any business in today’s data-driven world. I received exposure to many programming languages and analytical applications, but spent most of my degree using R as my primary coding platform.
Not long after graduation, I landed a job in Washington, D.C. at a successful analytics and research company that was on the rise, with a role as a Data Analyst. I also married my longtime girlfriend, and therefore uprooted her from our hometown of New Jersey to move to the DC area with me. This adventure turned out to be a wonderful experience overall, and I loved my time at my job. However, as time went on, my role unexpectedly transitioned into more of a project management direction largely due to our technology being so superior and doing much of the analytics work for us and also because my team needed me to pitch in. I briefly lost touch with what I had spent the past year learning at Northwestern and felt I took a slight step backwards career-wise. As a result, I had to make the incredibly difficult decision to part ways with my company, where I developed some lifelong friendships and a close bond with my team. I will miss them and our strong team dynamic, but I knew I had to hit the reset button once more to get my career back on track.
There were a number of options I could have chosen. I could have simply returned back to the job market. I could have moved home right away. However, a special opportunity came along that was not anticipated. I qualified and was accepted into Flatiron School’s full-scholarship Data Science Fellowship program. This program is highly intensive and moves at lightning pace over the course of 3 months to amply prepare students for successful careers in Data Science. They also use their career teams to land jobs for students upon graduation and have a proven rate of success in doing so. To me, this was an opportunity I could not refuse, as it was a chance to sharpen my skills at no cost for a very brief period of time and also thoroughly learn Python, which has asserted itself as one of the leading data science softwares due to it’s unlimited capabilities.
To this day, we are about three weeks away from finishing the program and I love this line of work, despite the incredible demands of this program. I have learned an immense amount of material and already feel like a very capable Python coder who is just scratching the surface. I am certain that I made the right decision to join Flatiron and can’t wait to see how the future unfolds. Along with my extensive background of career experiences, I am confident that Flatiron will help me realize my long-term goal of becoming a successful data scientist in sports or business. I believe my Data Science journey has allowed me to build a door to a promising future for myself and my family, and I look forward to continuing to learn and grow in this profession.
