From Pro Athlete to Data Engineer: Colleen Fotsch’s Inspiring Journey

Colleen Fotsch won national swimming championships and was a pro athlete in both CrossFit and bobsledding. Now she's excelling at data analytics and engineering! Today, hear her fun, inspiring and practical story.

More on Colleen:

• As a collegiate swimmer, she won national championships and set an American record in the relay.

• As a pro CrossFit athlete, she twice competed at the “Games”, which is the highest echelon of the sport.

• And then she simultaneously pursued a degree in data analytics while training with the US Bobsled team.

• An injury ended her Olympic Bobsled team dream, but luckily she’d been pursuing that analytics career in parallel!

• She began working full-time as a data analyst four years ago and has now grown into a data-engineering leadership role at a healthcare-staffing firm called CHG Healthcare in Utah, where she serves as Senior Technical Manager of their Data Platform.

• Inspires her 280,000 Instagram followers on a daily basis.

Today’s episode essentially has two separate parts:

• The first half focuses on Colleen’s exciting journey to the highest levels of three sports: swimming, CrossFit and bobsledding. That part should be fascinating to just about anyone.

• The second half covers Colleen’s transition into data analytics and data engineering; that part will appeal to technically-minded listeners, particularly ones considering a career in or early on in a career in analytics or engineering.

In today’s episode, Colleen details:

• The connection between a competitive sports mindset and data-career success.

• Proven strategies for being hired into your first data role later in your career.

• Why being "not smart enough" for coding was a mental block she had to overcome.

• How analytics engineering bridges the gap between data engineering and analysis.

• The huge benefits deskbound professionals can enjoy by including regular exercise in their week, and tips and tricks for developing or growing an exercise habit.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Double Your Data Salary in 11 Months, with Jess Ramos

Today's episode features the charismatic and intelligent Jess Ramos. A data analyst, Jess has grown a huge social-media following via her fun content on SQL, data science, tech advances and career growth.

More on Jess:

• Founder of Big Data Energy Analytics⚡️, a company that supports her in-demand courses on SQL and data analytics.

• Senior Data Analyst at Crunchbase.

• Previously worked as a Senior Risk Analyst and as a Data Analytics Manager.

• Her popular social-media content (on SQL, data analytics, data science, tech advancements and maximizing professional growth) has led her to amassing over 300k followers across LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

• She holds a Bachelor's in Math and she also holds a Master's in Business Analytics from The University of Georgia.

Today’s episode will appeal especially to folks who are looking to grow their career or grow into a career in data analytics or data science.

In today’s episode, Jess details:

• How she more than doubled her data analyst salary in less than a year.

• The questionable value of data science bootcamps.

• Her controversial take on "girl math" that made a splash in international mainstream news.

• The unexpected viral post that launched her into social-media fame.

• Essential advice for anyone starting their data career journey

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

How to Influence Others with Your Data

If you ever use data to make decisions or to persuade those around you to make data-driven decisions, today’s episode is jam-packed with relevant, practical tips from data presentation guru Ann K. Emery.

Ann:
• Is an internationally-acclaimed speaker who delivers 100+ keynotes, workshops, and webinars each year to enable people to share data-driven insights more effectively.
• She has consulted on data visualization, data reporting, and data presentation with over 200 organizations — the likes of the United Nations, the US Centers for Disease Control, and Harvard University.
• She holds a BA in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Virginia and a Masters in Educational Psychology Evaluation, Assessment, and Testing from George Mason University.

I rarely say that everyone should listen to an episode, but this is one of those rare cases.

In this episode, Ann details:
• What data storytelling is.
• Best practices for data visualization.
• Surprising tricks you can pull off with spreadsheet software.
• How to report on data effectively.
• Her top tips for presenting data in a slideshow.

The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Data Analyst, Data Scientist, and Data Engineer Career Paths

Keen to become a Data Analyst? Get promoted to Sr Data Analyst? Or explore Data Engineer/Scientist options? Shashank, a YouTube expert on these questions (>100k subscribers!) tackles them in today's episode.

Shashank:
• Has an exceptional YouTube channel focused on helping people break into a data analyst career.
• Works as a Senior Data Engineer at digital sports platform Fanatics, Inc.
• Was previously Data Analyst at luxury retailer Nordstrom and other firms.
• Holds a degree in chemistry from Emory University in Atlanta.

Today’s episode will appeal primarily to folks who are interested in becoming a data analyst, or who are interested in transitioning from a data analyst role into a data science or data engineering role.

In this episode, Shashank details:
• How you can land an entry-level data analyst role in just a few weeks, regardless of your educational and professional background.
• The hard and soft skills you need to progress from a junior data analyst to a senior data analyst position.
• What it takes to transition from data analyst to a typically more lucrative role as a data scientist or data engineer.
• His favorite resources for learning the essential skills for data scientists.
What he looks for when he’s interviewing candidates.

The SuperDataScience show's available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Open-Source Analytical Computing (pandas, Apache Arrow)

The legend Wes McKinney is this week's guest! He details the genesis of the ubiquitous pandas library, the forthcoming edition of his bestselling book, and how Apache Arrow brings analytics into the distributed computing era.

Wes:
• Created pandas, the industry-standard Python library for data analytics
• Co-created Apache Arrow, a language-agnostic open-source library for efficient analytics on modern distributed CPUs and GPUs
• Wrote the classic O'Reilly Media desk reference "Python for Data Analysis"
• Has worked as technical expert at prestigious firms like Cloudera, RStudio PBC, Two Sigma, and AQR Capital Management
• Today serves as co-founder and CTO of Voltron Data

In this episode, Wes takes us on a technical deep-drive through:
• The creation story of his now-ubiquitous pandas library
• A sneak peek at the third edition of his international-bestselling book
• What the Apache Arrow project is and why it's poised to revolutionize the data science and software industries
• The software and hardware tools that he uses daily to be such an epically productive software developer and entrepreneur
• Responses to great questions by listeners Daniel, David, Doug, and Brett

The SuperDataScience show's available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.

Bringing Data to the People

This week's guest is super-cool Anjali Shrivastava. Anjali makes data accessible and broadly appealing by analyzing pop culture — from TikTok mansions to Star Wars timelines — in her fun and creative YouTube videos.

Anjali is an expert in data-science visualization. She has used this skill set to engineer visualizations of data in production systems in a number of roles and recently took up a data science role at the lab technology giant Thermo Fisher Scientific.

We dig into her technical expertise, including her favorite software tools and applications for viz. We also discuss Anjali's mission to bring a face to data, which she accomplishes through journalism as well as through her brilliant and fun "Vastava" YouTube channel.

Anjali holds dual degrees from the prestigious University of California, Berkeley in data science, as well as in industrial engineering and operations research. A recent graduate, she fill us in on what a data science degree curriculum is like at a top university like Berkeley, as well as how anyone can access their world class data science lectures online.

Listen or watch here.

Say No to Pie Charts

Public Service Announcement for this week's Five-Minute Friday: Don't use pie charts! (Nor, in almost all circumstances, ANY circular chart!)

Listen or watch here.

Fixing Dirty Data

My guest this week is the fixer of dirty data herself, the one and only Susan Walsh. We have a lot of laughs in this episode as we discuss how organizations can save substantial sums by tidying up their data.

Susan has worked for a decade as a data-quality specialist for a wide range of firms across the private and public sectors. For the past four years, she's been doing this work as the founder and managing director of her own company, The Classification Guru Ltd. She's also the author of the forthcoming book, "Between the Spreadsheets", and she hosts her own video interview show called "Live from the Data Den".

Listen or watch here.