Alumni Notes 2016

A record number of alumni — more than 100! — sent in updates about post-Cal Poly life in 2016. Find out who's an actuary, who went back to school, who started a family, and more below.

2016

Dylan Henson

I am currently working toward getting my master's degree as part of Cal Poly's first ever master's in business analytics class. Once I graduate in June, I plan on moving back down to Southern California to find a job. 

Jake Jaffe

For an update, I just (like just just) began a job at Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies (Warren Buffet's company!). Their office is in San Francisco so I take BART to get there. The position is definitely more on the data entry side for now, but I'm hoping it can grow into something more meaningful to me.

As far as long term future plans, I'm strongly considering giving teaching a try (high school statistics). 

I've visited Cal Poly a couple times since I graduated to see friends, and I definitely plan on visiting again. I owe my favorite department on campus a visit, so I will see you guys and everybody soon!

Lauren Kemp

Since graduating in June, I moved back to my hometown of Santa Barbara. In July I started working for Procore, a construction management software startup in Carpinteria. As a member of the Business Intelligence and Operations team, I work on analytics, reporting and data quality projects that help our business grow. Big shout out to STAT 465 for preparing me for the cross-departmental work involved in this job, as well as STAT 331 for giving a solid background in R programming, which is a skill my team utilizes heavily to complete our projects.

Rachel Kiley (Free)

After graduating, I moved back to the Bay Area and began the summer as the maid of honor at my best friend's wedding. I spent the rest of the summer traveling with friends and family and enjoying my time with them. After helping my sister move in at her new college, I started my job search, and I have some exciting opportunities coming up. I plan to stay in Northern California to be close to friends and family and to take advantage of what the Bay and the Sacramento area have to offer.

Jianyi Liang

I am very honored to be one of the Cal Poly alumni in the Statistics Department newsletter. It has been a while since our graduation ceremony. I miss Cal Poly life and the Statistics Department so much. During summer, I spent a month traveling with my friends and family in California. I went to L.A., San Diego and Yosemite. The trip was wonderful. Then I moved back to San Francisco. I was enjoying my summer while doing my job hunting.

Eventually, I found an interesting position in a non-profit organization to start my career. Now I am a service delivery scheduler for Homebridgeca.org. The core of the organization is to help elderly and disabled people through providing excellent home-care services in San Francisco. Basically, I schedule home-care providers to clients day by day. I know that the position does not involve any statistics, but I applied a lot of skills which I learned at Cal Poly to this position. The photos were taken during a Halloween Party at the organization office.

So far, I enjoy what I am doing, but at the same time, I am still exploring what I really want to be. I am glad that I went to Cal Poly and had a such wonderful college experience. Thanks all Cal Poly statistics professors.

Ryan Logsdon

After graduating, I spent my first couple months recovering from ACL surgery and spending that time with my family at home in Simi Valley, Calif. Currently, I am working as a pricing analyst for a company called EPRI located in Palo Alto, Calif. My job as a pricing analyst entails maintaining company specific metrics to determine EPRI's portfolio pricing, performing analysis for verifying these metrics, and working with the IT, sales and marketing teams.

Originally from the L.A. area, I am enjoying this new experience working in Silicon Valley and am currently living with my fellow Mustang and fraternity brother in a town called Mountain View. Taking advantage of the homework-less weekends, I have spent time exploring the Bay Area, going to concerts in Berkeley and San Francisco, wine tasting in the beautiful Napa Valley, but also making my way back down to San Luis Obispo a few weekends. As wonderful as the post-graduate life is, I do miss my stats family a lot and hope to come back and visit as much as I can.

Donna Martin and Bradley Skubic

Bradley Skubic and I drove across the country this summer on our move to Boston, Mass. I'm now working as a software test engineer for a company called 2Is Inc. that provides supply support innovation to the Department of Defense and its industrial partners. Bradley is now working as a solutions developer for a company called Shyft Analytics that helps pharmaceutical companies analyze their clinical data.

Danny Rithy

I am working as a sales data analyst at Alicia Klein. At the same time, I am interning as a data analyst at Sennosen LLC this fall.

Conor Shannon

It seems a lot longer than only five months since I was last breathing in fresh Cal Poly air and staring up at the P glimmering above the Stats Department. Since then, I've been attending UCSB en route to obtain my master’s in statistics. It has been tough, but Cal Poly has prepared me well. My current professor, Dr. Jammalamadaka (yes, he lets us call him Dr. J) knows a lot of the professors at Cal Poly and says that it is a great program and sends them his best.

Bradley Skubic (see Donna Martin)

Megan Whitworth

Bringing the power pose to Walt Disney World

I have been working as a data analyst intern for the Walt Disney Company for these last six months. I have extended my internship and will continue working for Disney until this summer. I am living my dreams I have had since I was a kid of working for Disney and have been enjoying my free time going to the Disney parks.

2015

Boudewijn Aasman

Right after graduation, I worked as a data scientist intern at a graph database company in Oakland. About seven months ago, I moved to New York City for a data science job with the Montefiore hospital system, specifically the Clinical Research Informatics team there. No masters yet, but I'm planning on doing a masters in computer science in the upcoming school year while I continue work here with Montefiore. I miss the Stat Department.

Irvin Alcaraz

After graduating I traveled around Mexico for a bit before I started working at a company called OpenX as a quantitative analyst. It's been over a year since I started working with them, and it's been an incredible learning and growing experience. The early days of my job were successful thanks to the wonderful education Cal Poly provided me. As far as personal updates, nothing too big has happened as of yet. I've been enjoying my days at work and my favorite hobby — taking time off to vacation.

Colton Gagel

I now work as a data analyst for a software company down here in San Diego. I primarily do SQL and other database development work. Majoring in stats at Cal Poly was the best decision I ever made. GO POLY!

Cori Gaul

I’m a consultant at Deloitte Analytics using SAS and time series analysis to evaluate a bank’s statistical models. I live in Oakland, travel to New York City for work, and am newly addicted to coffee and soul cycle.

Julia Goll

Working in Secondary Mortgage Market as an analyst. Living in San Francisco, accompanied by two dogs Milo and Stella.

Amber Hanna

After graduating, I traveled for a while to Europe and got to see 10 different countries. Then, I moved back to my home town in San Diego and found a job at Sempra Energy, owners of SDGE and other southern California utilities, working in the Contracts Management Department.

Isabel Litton

I recently got my master’s in analytics and have started working at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development. 

Martha Mejia

Since graduating from Cal Poly I have been working for Hyundai Motor America in Fountain Valley. In my first role with Hyundai I worked as an analyst in Part Sales handling reporting, forecasting and investigating market share. Recently, I shifted gears and moved to the Customer Operations team in which I assist with modeling customer behavior and satisfaction with the goal of identifying customers who are at risk of dissatisfaction and proactively reaching out to them.

My time away from work has been spent relaxing, traveling, going to concerts and scuba diving. One thing I am really looking forward to is that at the end of this year I will be diving the Great Barrier Reef.

Jeremy Mulcahey

I am graduating with my master's in statistics in December. I will start full-time as a statistician at State Farm in January. In addition to my projects, I will be assisting in the State Farm MAGNet (Modeling & Analytics Graduate Network) program at UGA helping the next round of graduate interns prepare for life as research statisticians. I hope my upcoming role in MAGNet will encourage other Cal Poly students to join The Farm and pursue a master's in statistics here.

Phillip Richardson

I am working as a business operations analyst for an auto insurance underwriting company called Verisk in their San Francisco-based office. We perform risk analysis for insurance companies like Metlife and Liberty to find premium leakage within their policy holders. I have been able to translate my consulting and programming skills from the Statistics Department into success at work. I am enjoying the work life, though I do miss late nights in the stat lab!

Samantha Saenz

I continued my studies at Cal Poly for an additional year. I earned my mathematics single subject teaching credential in the spring of 2016. This past summer I moved to San Diego. I currently love my job as a first year teacher at Diego Valley Charter.

Mitchell Sanregret

I am living in Sacramento, just a couple blocks away from the capital. I am working at Marketing Evolution, where we measure the effectiveness of advertisements using logistic regression and other forms of descriptive analysis. I have been using only R (No JMP or SAS sadly). Some hobbies I have right now are playing fantasy football and trading the stock market. I miss being a student at Cal Poly — hope you all are doing well!

Helen Totterdell

A week after graduating from Cal Poly I got married. Amanda Drennan from the program was one of my bridesmaids.

I'm in my third semester of an MPH program at Brigham Young University and doing great. I'll have one more class in the winter along with taking a certification exam and defending my fieldwork (which was an internship with the Association for Utah Community Health). I've worked as a teaching assistant (for biostatistics, of course) and a research assistant for a few professors and do a lot of projects related to social media and its role in health. I'm currently the principal investigator for a study examining the types of family relationship problems adolescents have on Tumblr. I absolutely love research and hope that whatever job I find will allow me to do research.

Biggest news of 2016 is above, and I'm due Nov. 1, so if the deadline had been a wee bit later, you may have gotten a picture of a sweet baby girl instead of this. My professors have been extremely flexible with due dates for assignments, but it has meant cramming two months of school into one.

Hope all is well. I'm missing the professors at Cal Poly a lot and think often about how great you all are. The program taught me statistics well. I'm often the first source for help when a classmate has a problem and always can help.

Robin Tu

I hope all of you guys at Cal Poly are doing well. I miss San Luis Obispo and the Statistics Department a lot. Just the other day I was looking at photos of Cerro San Luis and reminiscing about my time there. It truly is a blessing to have spent some time in SLO.

There have been many firsts since I’ve left Cal Poly. I left California to study (in another state), I successfully survived my first winter, and I survived my first year in graduate school at the University of Illinois. Winter is truly not as bad as everyone makes it out to be and seasons are really nice, but it’s nothing like consistent weather year round. I’ve found that Professor McGaughey’s description of the Midwest particularly accurate: “If you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes.”

I’ll be running the 2017 Boston Marathon and continuing my studies toward my Ph.D. (picking up the free master’s along the way).

Jimmy Wong

I have moved to the Washington, D.C. metro area. Currently, I am a statistician at the FDA's Office of Biostatistics in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. It has definitely been great living on the East Coast so far, being acclimated to the area and weather here. I also have met many good friends who I enjoy spending time with. Last winter was the first time I personally experienced snow, believe it or not. And I am actually looking forward to spending another snowy Christmas and winter season here on the other side of the country. I have to thank the Statistics Department for providing me the opportunities to prepare myself for this current stage in life. Specifically, Dr. Beth Chance was very influential in helping me to develop my professional skills to be ready for any future challenges.

Christopher Yim

After graduating, I moved to Raleigh, N.C., and obtained a master’s in analytics at North Carolina State University. During that time I led a team of five for a government agency practicum project. From there I moved to Washington, D.C., where I am currently working as an associate at Ankura Consulting Group, an expert services firm that specializes in litigation support, corporate investigation and restructuring. As an associate I provide data analysis, reports and professional support for various client engagements. Having never lived anywhere besides California, moving to the East Coast has been an adventure that has allowed me to explore much of the surrounding area.

As a side note, N.C. State's master's program is a very natural extension of Cal Poly's statistics program. I would highly recommend it as a possible opportunity for people who are interested in obtaining a higher education for the purposes of going into industry. If anyone (prospective students/curious staff) has any questions about it, I would be more than happy to answer them!