This episode of Ken’s Nearest Neighbors is powered by z by hp. hp’s high computer, workstation grade line of products and solutions. Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Shashank Kalanithi. Shashank currently works at Nordstrom as a Data Analyst and was kindly introduced to me through John David over at the how to get an analytics job podcast. Shashank studied chemistry in undergrad and quickly pivoted into analytics after getting his first taste. He has a passion for spreading analytics knowledge and his experience in the data field through his YouTube channel. In this episode we talk about how Shashank was able to carve his own path in his work to land his first role, how he fell in love with python from being a no code data analyst, and why he started content creation and consulting during the pandemic.

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Vin Vashishta. Vin works in applied machine learning and strategy. He builds and brings projects to market with ARR in the hundreds of millions. He has spent over 25 years in tech and the last 10 working in the data science and machine learning field. Since 2015, he has been frequently recognized as one of the fields thought leaders. In this episode we talk about what the future of data science looks like based on its history, how new data companies may have an advantage on older ones, and how you can create opportunities for yourself in this domain.

 This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Avery Smith. Avery is on a mission to help working professionals break into data science. He is also completely obsessed with data. He has a dashboard to track his iphone app usage and even analyzes his dog's fitbit data.  Avery is the creator of data career jumpstart and the founder of Snow data science.  In this episode we learn about how Avery first fell in love with data science, the risk reward tradeoff he analyzed when considering leaving a good corporate data job to start his own consulting company, and about how you can use your brand to start a company or land the job of your dreams.

Joe Reis is a “recovering data scientist”, CEO of Ternary Data, and a business-minded data nerd who’s worked in the data industry for 20 years, with responsibilities ranging from statistical modeling, forecasting, machine learning, data engineering, data architecture, and almost everything else in between. He’s the host of the popular data show and podcast, the Monday Morning Data Chat, interviews data celebrities on The Data Nerd Herd, and runs several popular meetups, including The Utah Data Engineering Meetup and SLC Python. Joe also teaches at the University of Utah, and is the co-author of the upcoming O’Reilly book, The Fundamentals of Data Engineering. When he’s not busy running a company, teaching, or creating content, Joe often finds himself rock climbing or trail running in the mountains around Salt Lake City, Utah. In this episode Joe talks about how the data domain has changed over the last 20 years. You also learn about why he considers himself a “recovering data scientist”.

 Harpreet Sahota is a friend, a father, a data scientist and a fellow content creator that hosts the artists of data science podcast. He also has built an incredible community around his twice a week data science office hours. Harpreet mentors over 2500+ aspiring and early-career data professionals because wants to see them level up in this field. He holds himself personally responsible for their career advancement by providing the best quality mentorship and technical guidance. Harpreet is also constantly learning and is not intimidated by the prospect of applying newly learned tools to big, messy, complex, real-world data problems. In this podcast Harpreet talks about the power of reading, how he faced himself and changed course when he started going down the wrong path, we also get deeply philosophical about purpose, work, and growth. 

Hyoun Park is the CEO and Founder of Amalgam Insights, an industry analyst firm focused on managing data and the finance of technology at scale. Over the past 20+ years, Park has been at the forefront of trends such as Moneyball, social networking, Bring Your Own Device, data monetization, and the Subscription Economy working with startups, large enterprises, and the investment community. Park has been quoted in USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Barron’s, and a wide variety of mainstream and technology press sources. Although he primarily works with enterprise technologies, Park has a soft spot in his heart for new and innovative technology startups and is dedicated to supporting greater gender and cultural diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Park has an MBA from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from Amherst College.

Luke is a Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from Ole Miss who served 7 years as an officer in the U.S. Navy as part of the submarine force. For the first half of his career, he was stationed on the USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) leading engineering teams and deploying 4 times. For the second half of his career, he was part of the training department for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program sending trained students out to man the fleet. After the military, he returned to school for his MBA and specialized in business analytics. After school he landed a job in an international-based chemical company and started as a business analyst, slowly transitioning his career into a full on Data Analyst.

 Will is a junior in high school, he has been super involved with data science. He is innovating the data collected on twitch and esports. He self taught himself how to code from a young age and is now using what he has learned to create tools for esports and analyze data from twitch.

Stefanie Molin is a software engineer and data scientist on Bloomberg's Security Data Science team, which researches and develops solutions using data and machine learning to help improve and automate Bloomberg’s information security processes. She focuses on identifying and answering security-related questions using data and developing software to address them. She holds a bachelor’s of science degree in operations research from Columbia University, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in computer science, with a specialization in machine learning, from Georgia Tech. She is the author of “Hands-On Data Analysis with Pandas,” now in its second edition.

Greg Watson is a content creator and sports enthusiast currently living in the Washington DC area. By day he is a data scientist working for the IRS, where he uses machine learning to detect fraud. After that he can be found at local happy hours, watching the game and figuring out where to travel to next.In this episode we learn how Greg landed a data science job with a less than stellar undergrad GPA. We also learn some differences about working in the public and private sectors.