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Showing posts from October, 2016

Educational Backgrounds of Data Industry Professionals

As some of you may know, I co-founded a group in the Bay Area for women who work in the data industry with Chloe Tseng  back in March. These past 8 months have been extremely rewarding for me. Not only have I been sharpening my organizing and community building skills but I've built an amazing network of friendship and support.  One thing that continually will come up in our conversations is the idea of "non-traditional" vs. "traditional" educational backgrounds. "Traditional" referring to professionals who have a STEM (i.e. Computer Science, Statistics, Math, etc.) background versus those of us who have a degree in a liberal arts field (i.e. Communications, Business, PoliSci, etc.). It's really interesting to see how this manifests in the types of struggles they face. Speaking personally, I studied Political Science and had a few non-data jobs before entering this space. I've always felt a bit behind from peers who have STEM backgrounds whi