About Me
I'm Riley, nice you meet you!
Educational Background
I graduated from Washington State University in December 2019 with a Bachelor's in Management Information Systems. My undergraduate coursework included Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Calculus for Business and Economics, Managing Information Technology, Financial Management, Operations Management, Business Intelligence, Strategic Management, Data Management, Business Process Analysis, and Enterprise Business Development. The coursework focused primarily on Relational Database Management, Database Structures, Data Normalization, and SQL. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I was continually fascinated with the sheer number of learning opportunities that are available within the fields of Data Analytics and Data Science, and I'm looking to pursue a Master's in Data Science in the near future.
During my time at Washington State, I was fortunate to receive the opportunity to serve as a Teaching Assistant within my department. I was tasked within independently instructing a lab section of the Managing Information Technology course, focusing on Excel. I guided students through concepts including formulas, V-Lookups, pivot tables, pivot charts, and macros. I firmly believe that teaching a subject is the best way to test your own knowledge, and this truly put my skills to the test. However, this helped me improve my own skills to be able to educate in a successful manner, and my lab section consistently obtained the highest test scores across the entire course throughout the semester.
To conclude, Go Cougs!
Professional Background
Shortly after completing my undergraduate degree, I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. I began working for Tesla as a Contract Reassignment Agent under the Property & Title Department. During this time, I managed a high volume of both inbound and outbound customer communication. In addition to the customer-facing aspects of my role, I quickly learned the ins and outs of each type of solar contract that Tesla had to offer and was able to draft various contract amendments to transfer each contract from seller to buyer during their respective real estate transaction. The fast-paced nature of this role helped me develop professionally, and what I learned continues to help me in my current role. In addition to my daily workload, I was fortunate to be able to develop training materials for each team within the Property & Title department, and to be able to assist other teams with aggregating customer data within an internal CRM software.
After leaving Tesla, I began working for a Fintech startup, Assure, as a Client Experience Manager. Throughout my time in the role, I managed 200+ active client accounts and was able to exceed the average client retention by nearly 20% due to my communication skills. I used many tools and strategies to accomplish this, with the most notable being a Python script that I wrote in order to automate semi-regular client outreach email campaigns. Similar to my role at Tesla, I was able to develop training materials for both the Revenue and Operations teams within the organization. However, my favorite aspect of working for a startup was the flexibility within my role to be able to take on projects with more technical focus. I was granted permission to create KPI dashboards with Domo for each department, and was instrumental in refining ETL processes to optimize the storage and retrieval of data. These projects allowed me to produce deliverables enabling the implementation of new business processes.
Once my time at Assure had come to its end, I accepted an offer from Vauban, a Fintech company based in London, United Kingdom. I've joined the team as a U.S. Venture Capital Deals Associate and have been working to expand the VC product offerings in the U.S. market. Although I haven't been in the role for long, I'm excited for the opportunity to continue to grow and develop my career in Financial Technologies.
Continued Professional Development
I'm incredibly passionate about learning, and I firmly believe in the importance of continuing education throughout the duration of my career. I've recently been taking courses online to further my knowledge of topics I'm interested in, including teaching myself how to code HTML to create this website. I'm in the process of applying for Master's programs in Data Science, and aspire to purse a rewarding career in this lucrative field in the future.
Most recently, I've completed a Data Analytics Consulting Virtual Internship through KPMG, focusing on Data Quality Assessment, Data Insights, and Data Visualization and Presentation. I've also been working on furthering my technical skills, and have obtained multiple Professional Certificates. So far, I've completed the IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate, IBM Data Analytics with Excel and R Professional Certificate, IBM Data Science Professional Certificate, and Databases for Data Scientists Specialization through the University of Colorado Boulder. Even though I've completed these items, I don't intend to stop pushing myself to continue learning any time soon.
Other Interests
When I'm not developing my skills with HTML, Python, SQL, or R, you can find me on the mountain! I've been snowboarding since I was a teenager, but have recently taught myself how to ski (I moved to Utah with an agenda). Please don't ask me which is my favorite between the two, since it tends to change on an almost daily basis. Regardless of which option I choose, nothing is more fun than a day on the slopes with friends/family.