Master of Science in Business Analytics

Fan (Fiona) Dong

Fiona graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2021 with a B.A. in Economics. Her self-driven, curious, and analytical character laid the foundation for her academic and professional achievements, and with a solid knowledge in mathematics and economics, she has been top 15% of her major during her undergrad studies. Fiona is truly passionate about leveraging data analytical techniques to identify business opportunities and deliver insights to drive strategic decision-making, and eager to explore interdisciplinary applications of economic and quantitative analysis. Hence, Fiona joined UCLA MSBA 2022 cohort to furthering her skillsets and gaining even more experiences to spur her forward.

Prior to MSBA, she gained industry experience from interning at Ernst & Young at Shanghai office, where she provided financial services to clients and was greatly exposed to data. She was able to see how data analytics were already leveraged by auditors. For instance, she Identified potential audit issues in financial statements through detailed trend analysis and market research in a leading company in the Copper industry during her summer internship. She also worked as an investment banking analyst summer intern at Hengfeng Bank where she analyzed financial data and used Power BI to generating insightful financial reports on funding allocation for company projects, as well as built dynamic weight allocation model by using MATLAB. She was able to combine the data analytics skills with her economic and business knowledge, to gather more real-life insights from data.

At MSBA, Fiona has been constantly inspired by her classmates’ breadth of worldly perspectives and diverse professional backgrounds. She has learned advanced SQL, R, Python, and applications of analytics to the business world. Besides, she is extremely grateful for course offerings such as Database Management and Industry Seminars, from which she acquired brand new sets of knowledge that would be tremendously helpful in her future career as a data analyst.

Going forward, Fiona is thrilled to continue sharping her quantitative analysis skills and transforming herself into a data expert to help company to make better data-driven decisions and build strategic and competitive advantage.

I'm a current student for a Master of Science in Business Analytics at UCLA Anderson School of Management. I'm learning everything about data and the tools for it right now and super enthusiastic about everything (woo-hoo!!!!).

Tools I'm practicing with:
- Python
- SQL
- R

I had been a sole entrepreneur in the sneaker/streetwear/fashion industry for over 3 years. I was in charge of transactional data collecting, problem-solving, customer service, etc.

Interesting things about me:
- I have a great passion for sneakers and have a great sneaker collection.
- I have two beautiful cats (Cookie and Carmel) and I love them a lot.

Jiayi is pursuing an M.S degree in Business Analytics at UCLA Anderson School of Management, starting September 2021. Before graduate school, I worked as a data analyst in Ipsos, specializing in market research in automotive industry. He graduated from UC Davis, majoring Managerial Economics with minor in statistics.

Python, R, SQL, and Tableau are the main skills that help him to work as a data analyst. Meanwhile, Jiayi is also creative in his career path. He has great passion to work on data to find more useful information and resources internationally. in which he had three different startup experiences. 

Outgoing, persisting, and creativity are labels of my personality. I have strong interests in a tech-orientated data analysis position for my future career. I will continue working hard to improve myself as a data scientist in UCLA! I am really looking forward to working with more people in the data science industry!

Jimmy Shao

Enthusiastic about data analytics and its transformative impact, Jimmy is passionate about leveraging data-driven insights to solve real business problems. Jimmy graduated from UC San Diego with a Management Science (Econ) major. Post graduation, Jimmy worked two years at a ‘Big 4’ accounting firm auditing wealth and asset management firms, where he obtained Certified Public Accountant license. Being a member of a relatively traditional yet global enterprise, he deeply felt the mounting challenges toward digitization and increasing demand for automation. While managing cross-team duties during the day, Jimmy took initiative and created automation tools through Alteryx and Excel VBA and significantly expedited project timeline. 

Jimmy joined UCLA Anderson in 2021 to further his interest in business analytics. Through the MSBA program, he not only strengthens his skills in programming (like Python and SQL) and knowledge in data science topics, but also trains to tackle real world challenges through the lens of data. While looking forward to the more advanced classes in later quarters, Jimmy takes initiative to utilize what he learned in Python classes and writing web scraping scripts in support of his role as the Career Service VP.

Going forward, Jimmy is eager to continue his study in data science and is looking forward to applying the analytics techniques learned during the program and helping businesses accelerate growth and optimize operations.

Kelly graduated from North Carolina State University in 2020 with a B.S in Statistics and a minor in Business Administration. She is passionate about leveraging algorithms to train the models for targeting each single customer. The power of data has inspired Kelly to continue pursuing a Master’s degree in Business Analytics.

During her undergraduate study, Kelly has laid a solid foundation in mathematical statistics, linear algebra, data analytics, programming and business. In the summer of 2019, Kelly worked at Huazhong University of Science and Technology as a Research Assistant. She used SPSS to evaluate the relationship between job performance and employee related factors by analyzing data collected from more than 70 companies and over 1,000 employees. There, Kelly practiced her data cleaning and data visualization skills by facing real world problems. 

Kelly joined UCLA MSBA class of 2022. Through her course work, she has developed proficiency in multiple programming and database languages, such as SQL, Python and R. In addition, Kelly is excited in taking courses like Competitive Analytics, Customer Analytics, and Operations Analytics to apply Data Analysis knowledge in decision-making by using real-world cases.

Kamala graduated in 2020 from UC Berkeley, majoring in Bioengineering and minoring in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. She was first introduced to data analytics in her junior/senior year when she was a Predictive Analytics Intern at Genentech. During her internship, she applied skills from her engineering and computer science coursework to support data-driven decisions in drug testing. Her experience highlighted the importance of extracting technical insights from large data sets and effectively communicating those insights to business leaders.

In Fall 2020, she participated and won multiple nationwide competitions in machine learning and modeling, presenting to companies. Now Kamala is pursuing her Masters in Business Analytics at UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she has the valuable opportunity to combine data science and business strategy for powerful decision-making. She is actively applying to Data and Business Analytics internships for Summer 2022. 

Her hobbies are always changing, but currently, she enjoys reading and meditating.

Karthik has over 3 years of professional experience in data science and analytics consulting. He has lived most of his life moving across cities in India and this experience has expanded his worldview, having interacted with diverse cultures across the country. He pursued his undergraduate education at BITS Pilani and joined ZS after graduation. Post his 2.5 years stint at ZS, he worked with the analytics team at CommerceIQ, a high-growth eCommerce digital marketing startup based out of Bangalore, and later went on to join UCLA Anderson’s MSBA program.

During his experience with ZS, he worked on a variety of high-impact analytics projects for clients from the technology, healthcare, and agri-business industry. Working on problems across diverse industries helped him gain experience in synthesizing and packaging complex analyses and delivering data-driven recommendations to both technical and non-technical audiences including senior leadership teams. With an early career growth, Karthik also had the opportunity to mentor associates in his team and hone his leadership skills. 

During his experience with CommerceIQ, he worked on complex data reporting tools and added new reporting and dashboard functionalities to the existing application. His determination to strengthen his business fundamentals and further enhance his analytical and problem-solving skills, in the field of Machine Learning and Deep Learning, has brought him to UCLA Anderson.

At Anderson, Karthik is the Director of Marketing for the Business Analytics Association and is also a member of SOMA (Strategy and Operations Management Association) with an intent to stay abreast of industry trends and connect with like-minded peers. Overall, Karthik is an excellent team player with over 3 years of experience collaborating with cross-functional teams and has a proven record of generating favorable business outcomes for his clients. In his free time, he religiously follows Formula 1 motorsport, likes to go on treks with friends, and enjoys long-distance running.

Lingbo is now a MS in Business Analytics student at UCLA Anderson, and she earned her Honor Economics-BS degree with Math minor and data analytics concentration at Purdue University in May 2021. She has expertise in Python, SQL, R and Stata. Given great interest in storytelling with various types of data and data-driven project, she is open to any opportunities related to data analyst/data scientist especially in e-commerce company!

With working experience as research assistant, she possesses the ability to work in cross-functional teams to arrive at impact-driven product decisions that maximize product growth and optimize user experience. She utilized R studio to develop a ranking system for MS program to determine highest ranking indicator (career resources) for program ranking and build data visualization dashboards with Tableau and Python packages to address concise and user-friendly speech.

Overall, she is a team player and problem solver with strong data analytical skill, robust product sense and data storytelling skill. Outside schoolwork, she likes to balance life and study with badminton, dancing and traveling, stay passionate and optimate towards life.

Reid is passionate about using data to help businesses enrich their customers and the world with innovative products and services.

Reid graduated from The University of California – Santa Barbara with a B.A. in both Economics and Environmental Studies. During his senior year, he conducted original research to complete a thesis in Economics, producing a paper which focused on the effects of the Endangered Species Act on the California agricultural labor market.

After graduating from UCSB, Reid joined Strategyn, an innovation consulting firm that uses jobs-to-be-done theory to help clients identify high-value product and service innovation opportunities. Here, he worked with clients across a diverse set of industries including medical equipment, consumer packaged goods and many others. At Strategyn, Reid saw first-hand how data-driven methodologies such as customer segmentation can produce valuable insights that would have been invisible without modern machine learning techniques.

Reid is grateful for the opportunity to continue his quantitative and business education with MSBA. He is most excited for Machine Learning, Prescriptive Models and Operations Analytics. Additionally, he has been enjoying the opportunity to learn Python, R and SQL in a structured environment, preparing him to be an effective data scientist outside of the classroom. When not studying, Reid enjoys spending his time surfing and reading.

Rohith is fondly known as J M S. Rohith is an avid problem solver and highly motivated data analytics practitioner. He likes to develop tools and products that help businesses and non-tech savvy people take effective decisions. He is experienced in leading client engagement, teams and working in global and diverse teams. He is adept at using Python, Hive, SQL, R, Tableau and Shell

Rohith graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2017 with a bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering. Among all the courses, he particularly liked Machine Learning & Pattern Recognition, Information Theory and Coding, Digital Signal & Speech Processing. During his time at IIT Guwahati, he enrolled into additional courses in Computer Science, Economics, Human Resource Management to gain exposure. During summer of 2015, Rohith co-authored 2 research papers, analyzing the differences in a healthy person's speech, cough sound and patient's speech, cough sounds.

During his time at IIT Guwahati, Rohith was actively involved in student government, welfare and campus events, often heading teams and shouldering a lot of responsibilities. He held positions of responsibilities like Undergraduate Senator in student government, Associate General Secretary, Center for Career Development team, co-convenor for his college's annual sport fest, Maintenance Secretary for his Hostel.

After his graduation, Rohith worked as a senior consultant with EXL Service in the decision analytics division. His projects include development of customer insights tools, identifying the right audience for ad campaigns and ML models for detecting fraud and anomalous activity in the ecosystem. During his stint with EXL, he led a 4 member-team and was in-charge of client engagement. He honed his skill of identifying the apt storyline for each discussion. 

Rohith joined MSBA program at UCLA Anderson to expand his ML repertoire and develop better understanding of analytics' usage in various industries. He is excited to learn about Customer Analytics and Marketing analytics and combine them with his knowledge of Fraud and Risk Analytics.

Rohith loves to cook for people, exploring different cuisines and is an outdoor person.

Mehatab completed his bachelor’s at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in Aerospace Engineering where his coursework allowed him to develop a deep technical background while also learning how to tackle diverse real-world problems. After his graduation from IIST he joined Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) where he found his deep lying interest and passion for Data Science which is a perfect blend of statistics, computer science and business domains.

On a professional front, Mehatab is a highly skilled data science and analytics professional with a passion for data-driven decision making. He comes with six years of work experience in data science from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and has worked on a diverse range of data analytics and machine learning projects. At ISRO, he was responsible for Data ETL Pipelining, building Machine learning (NLP, NLU, Fraud/Threat detection, Speech-to-text, Anomaly detection etc.), Deep learning models (Neural Recommender systems, object detection etc.), and delivering valuable and critical insights to improve the project reliability and help the organization make informed decisions. Leveraging on the tremendous potential and wonderful capabilities of Data science, he has delivered significant cost cuts apart from precious time savings for ISRO and its partners in a wide range of industries. Furthermore, he is experienced in working with large-scale distributed big data systems and worked on many projects leveraging technologies such as AWS, Apache Storm, Spark, Hadoop, Hive, Cassandra, OpenRefine, MongoDB, Tableau, etc. 

Mehatab had a strong career growth trajectory, where he moved to a Scientist ‘SD’- Data science (Program Manager) from Scientist ‘SC’- Data science role within three years. He is the recipient of the prestigious young scientist award for two straight years 2018, 2019 (from a pool of 1400 candidates) for his contributions to the Data Science domain. His career progression was largely based on his passion for data, delivering value, ability to quickly learn new technical skills, strong interpersonal and communication skills (with both internal and industry partners). He augmented his skillset further by attending courses at the Indian Institute of Science to learn SQL, R, VBA, Tableau, Power BI, Spark, SAS and analytical techniques like Causal inference, Hypothesis testing, A/B Testing, Deep learning post working hours, and weekends to contribute in the best possible way to the projects and deliver value to ISRO. He has also been working with tools like Excel, MATLAB, R apart from Python for almost 7 years not only for ML and data analytics applications but also the regular automation requirements back at ISRO.

In the last 3 years of working as a Scientist ‘SD’(Program manager- Data science), he led a wide range of projects with the size of the teams ranging from 4 to 20 people and oversaw more than 15 end-to-end product developmental cycles in a zero-defect environment. He worked on complex analytical and data science projects and often the end-users came from a non-data science background. He was responsible for packaging the analyses, insights, and actionable recommendations in a manner that is suitable for audiences from both technical and non-technical sides. This gave him the opportunity to be and get better at the beautiful art of cogent and efficient data storytelling which directly translated into generating great value for his organization. Moreover, he is a quick learner and very passionate about learning new things. This passion for learning led him to enroll in the master’s in Business Analytics from UCLA Anderson to further pursue his passion for data science. At Anderson he is currently majoring in Business analytics and will be graduating in the December of 2022.

Michael Chiu Bio

Industrial engineer and data scientist pursuing my second Master’s degree at UCLA Anderson. Four years experiences in industrial engineering and machine learning related projects with national laboratory, universities, and manufacturing companies.  Findings and recommendations increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. Trilingual in English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese. I love to travel. And I also like to explore the good food in LA. I hope I can try all the good in LA.

Mick graduated from the Technical University of Munich (Germany) with a B.S. degree in Technology and Management. Throughout this program, Mick did not only acquire skills in business administration, strategy, management, innovation, and coding, but also completed a semester abroad at the UC San Diego.

Upon his return to Germany, Mick started working at Celonis, the world’s leading process mining company. In his role as a Solution Engineer / Data Analyst, Mick utilized the company-owned cutting-edge technology to analyze and optimize clients’ processes. Important aspects of this job include data cleaning and analysis, dashboard design, use case generation, and business case calculation, as well as result presentation and overall project management.

Mick wrote his final thesis at the chair of marketing and consumer research, examining certain stimuli in consumer decision processes to draw conclusions about the interrelation of healthy eating trends and consumers diets, before moving on to become a management consultant at Porsche Consulting and Simon-Kucher & Partners. As a consultant, Mick interacted with multiple international clients in the automotive and consumer goods industries, refining his project management and communication skills and gaining experience in product quality management as well as in quantitative pricing analytics.

Having moved to the US, Mick is now excited to be part of the MSBA class of 2022. Throughout the summer quarter Mick will be interning as a Product Manager for SAPs Consumer Indsutry Cloud team. 

In his free time, Mick loves to do sports. He is thrilled to have moved to LA, where the opportunities for outside activities are endless. Mick is an avid surfer, tennis, and volleyball player

Minzhe is a proactive and detail-oriented problem solver and an organized team player equipped with academic knowledge of Data Science and extensive internship experience in analytics.

Majoring in Economics during her undergraduate career, she has a strong background in mathematics and statistics. She received the Third Prize in the Mathematical Modeling Competition to establish a multi-objective dynamic programming model based on heuristic algorithms using MATLAB and propose a two-day itinerary accordingly for local tourism. From her current master's program in Business Analytics at the University of California, Los Angeles, she has reinforced her data analysis and machine learning competency and completed projects for Disney on Customer Segmentation and Purchase Flow.

From the industry experience perspective, she worked as a Data Scientist at a leading premier K-12 education company in China, utilizing data science techniques like A/B testing and data visualization tools to provide actionable recommendations on marketing operations. She also developed a fraud detection system using anomaly detection, helping the company reduce reimbursement costs by $50K. During Winter 2019, She joined China International Capital Corporation as a Quantitative Analyst Intern, focusing on the SSE Composite Index prediction model. During Summer 2018, she interned as a credit assessment model researcher in the People's Bank of China, establishing an RBF neural network model for the credit management department to improve loan review efficiency. She is proficient in Python, SQL, R and has a thorough understanding of regression modeling, prediction, forecasting, and time series analysis.

As the President of UCLA MSBA Class of 2022, Minzhe is leading a strong student government team to represent the cohort's interests and back students up in every possible way. By regularly holding academic check-ins and festival celebration events, the team builds a diverse yet inclusive culture. Within that vibe, everyone in the cohort grows together and benefits from each other simultaneously.

Paul is a storyteller and an aspiring data connoisseur. He is passionate about sampling the art of data in various business rendezvous and longs to help organizations better navigate their risks and opportunities.

Paul graduated Cum Laude from UCLA, became a CPA while at PwC & Carrefour. He had previous work experience in developing predictive models by orchestrating ETL pipelines using SQL on large datasets (2M+/ Day) in Snowflake and presented statistical research, product trends, and root causes analysis to inform stakeholders of business decisions. Also, he improved the efficacy of the recurring analytics process by 30% using Alteryx and incorporated Tableau to dynamically track and visualize potential accounts for financial misstatement from 2.5M+/ Month transactional data.

In 2021, He embarked on his journey at UCLA Anderson in their Master of Science in Business Analytics program to further build his data analysis/ artificial intelligence/ machine learning skills with the ultimate goal of pursuing his career interest in data science.

On a personal level, Paul is an aviation enthusiast and a Cessna 172 student pilot. He is always excited to talk about his next cross-country flight for a $100 Burger.

Paul worked as a Technical Solutions Engineer at Epic Systems for nearly three years. He provided technical and strategic advice to analytics teams and executives at large hospital systems across the world. He also used SQL and R to identify opportunities for product growth and helped develop new KPIs for the analytics division to track. Through this experience, he learned how to combine data analysis with industry knowledge to generate successful business decisions impacting patient care. Prior to working at Epic Systems, Paul graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics with honors from Georgetown University and studied abroad for one year at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Paul joined UCLA’s MSBA program to further develop his skills in data analytics by growing his comfort with Python while learning more about utilizing programming to solve business problems. He is also excited to focus on topics such as machine learning, prescriptive models, customer analytics, and operations analytics. He is looking forward to using data to help improve the world.

In his free time, Paul enjoys playing, watching, and discussing soccer. He also hopes to run a marathon on every continent.

Priyanka is an innovative and resourceful data scientist with strong analytical skills, proficient in leveraging data to drive business transformation. She graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in August 2020 with a Bachelor’s of Technology (B. Tech) degree in Computer Science and Engineering with a minor in Humanities and Social Sciences. During the time, she developed her passion for solving real-world problems using Artificial Intelligence while working on projects involving Computational Intelligence, Computer Vision, Optimization, and Software Engineering. For her research in the field of Computer Vision, she developed a novel approach to match highly similar 3D objects (e.g., 3D biometrics) with promising applications in biomedical security, and the research was published in Springer journal’s special edition, Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning for Biomedical Applications.

Priyanka interned as a Decision Scientist at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore during her undergraduate studies where she worked on modeling the price processes of stocks and validating their characteristics. She also completed her certification in Quantitative Finance and Risk Management from the Indian Institute of Quantitative Finance.

Priyanka earned her Post Graduate Certification in Data Science from IIIT Bangalore, which included theoretical understanding and business applications of Data Management, Inferential Statistics, Exploratory Data Analysis, and Predictive Analytics. During the course, she worked on various data analytics projects and challenges to solve actual business problems. She actively participated in Machine Learning Hackathons and Case Study Competitions to gain more practical knowledge.

After her undergraduate studies, Priyanka started working as an Imagineer and Data Scientist at Fractal Analytics, a leading Customer Analytics Service Provider. She worked with a cross-functional team for a Fortune 500 client to build a user-friendly on-the-fly analytics software. She built an end-to-end analytical driver engine module for pinpointing key KPI drivers, which resulted in focused business strategies and improved digital adoption by 10%. She also developed real-time purchase intent prediction models and recommendation systems with over 70% accuracy using supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. She worked with big customer journey data and optimized modules for an automated data analysis pipeline. Her insights and recommendations from data analysis and modeling saved the client millions of dollars in recurring costs.

Priyanka joined the MSBA program at UCLA Anderson to strengthen her analytical skills and learn practical applications of analytics for business success in different industries. She is a member of the UCLA Business Analytics Association. She likes to connect with people having similar interests and follow industry trends. She participated in the Adobe Analytics challenge and worked with her team to answer the business questions posed by the client.

Outside of work, Priyanka volunteers as a Local Advisory Board Member for the Government of India’s initiative, Atal Tinkering Labs, raising scientific awareness among school children. She is an avid reader and enjoys cooking.

Rita is a highly motivated and quick-learning data scientist with a solid quantitative background. She graduated from Smith College with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a minor in Chemistry. During her last year of study in college, she conducted an air quality project in which she analyzed data and revealed the relationship between air quality and housing prices using hedonic analysis. She then found analytics can identify future opportunities that could spark new growth by making more efficient business decisions. 

Prior to joining Anderson, Rita worked at a securities company as an equity research analyst. As an analyst with a business and data background, Rita was able to leverage her data analytics skills in determining market trends and predicting market performance more precisely in the near future. She was also able to communicate with her non-tech background supervisors about her model and helped facilitate management decisions.

The UCLA MSBA program has given Rita a chance to strengthen her programming skills using languages such as SQL, Python, and R, build data visualization expertise in Tableau and acquire other advanced skills for academic and industrial applications such as data management, optimization, prescriptive analytics, customer analytics, and operations analytics.

Rachel graduated from University of Wisconsin, Madison with a bachelor's degree in computer science and Mathematics certificate. After years of practice in software development and numerical analysis, Rachel has grown a passion to promote the power of data in decision-making in the business world. Eagerly to expand knowledge to integrate real-world business operations and quantitative analysis, Rachel chose to join the Business Analytics program at UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Before joining the program, she had multiple internships and projects that allowed her to act as a bridge between clients and engineers to translate business objectives to technical products and services. During her internship, Rachel has grown interested in the multi-disciplinary practice between business and technology. Rachel aims to help businesses to grow by data-driven strategies.

Rachel is excited to learn more about prescriptive models, operation analytics and customer analytics in his upcoming quarters. She is looking forward to acquiring more industrial insights through her academic journey at Anderson, as well as her real-world experience.

People who know Ram professionally often say that he is like a rare unicorn in this data driven world. That is, he is one of those rare people who would not only be your first option for some serious technical and analytical expertise, but would also be your go-to man to deliver a highly business-oriented presentation. He can code, build empowering visualization dashboards, form data-driven business strategies, and also effectively communicate the same. And if there is something important that Ram cannot do yet, he will make sure he gets up to speed in as little time as required. 

Ram chose to pursue Computer Science in undergrad owing to his interest in technology and logic. When he began showing success in many analytical projects at college (such as winning the IBM Hack Challenge), he noticed that the techie in him was a huge asset to the analyst that he was becoming. Thus, he decided to further sharpen his technical skills after college before completely immersing himself into the analytics industry, by joining Soroco, a software automation company dealing with the latest cutting-edge technologies. After building various automation frameworks for a year using mainly Python, Pandas and SQL, Ram requested to shift to the core analytical team within Soroco. Here, he designed and developed two analytical Qlik applications: Process Insights and Application Insights, that helped clients standardize and automate their processes, and retire/promote/optimize their applications. Ram considers this an unparalleled experience because he believes that his analytics didn’t just change the way his clients worked, but rewrote their DNA. 

While grateful to his analytical and technical experience, he decided to level up with an MS degree in Business Analytics, which he is currently pursuing at UCLA Anderson. Here, he is further exploring cutting edge analytical tools (such as R, Hadoop and Spark), ML methods and optimization techniques. Additionally, he is also learning the science of business and management. While Ram is a hard worker, he also likes to play hard, and is likely to be found on the tennis courts during his free hours. 

Ram often describes his ultimate aim as ‘to unlock the power of analytics and data-driven business to its fullest potential’. Upon graduation, he plans to join a company that will enable him to fulfill this aim. 

Rick graduated from Erasmus University Rotterdam with a double degree in Econometrics and Operations Research, and Economics and Business Economics. His interest in consumer behavior made him pursue specializations in quantitative marketing and behavioral economics within his degrees. Always seeking opportunities to expand his technical skill set, he decided to add on a minor in Computer Science, where he learned about data mining techniques and database management. Rick also has a professional background in retail, where he developed a product recommendation machine for personalized marketing emails. 

Rick is truly grateful to be part of the MSBA Class of 2022, and has greatly benefited from the hands-on experience he has gained in SQL, Python, and R so far. Time flies by when he is programming and consequently testing a machine learning algorithm, which assures him he wants to pursue a programming-heavy career in data science. Outside of  the MSBA program, he loves watching comedy shows, reading about psychology, and running long distances.

Rick hopes to intern in Big Tech or Retail during the summer of 2022.

Rohan is an experienced Analytics professional who has worked as a Product Analyst at PayPal and Decision Scientist at Mu Sigma.

He graduated in Electronics and Communications Engineering from VIT University Vellore and started his career at Mu Sigma. He has worked with diversified industries like e-commerce, marketing analytics, airline sales analytics, and search advertisement. 

After Mu sigma, he joined PayPal as a Product Analyst where he worked on experimentation and AB Testing. Before MSBA at UCLA, he was a senior product analyst and led the consumer onboarding product analytics portfolio.

Rohan joined UCLA’s MSBA program to build solid analytics, data sciences, and storyboarding foundation. His goal is to grow as an analytics leader in the future and UCLA’s MSBA will work as a reliable bridge to achieve that target. He is passionate about Product Analytics and aspires to gain expertise in advanced experimentation, causal inference, and customer analytics.

In his free time, he enjoys playing tennis and watching Formula one.

Rohin (Ro) graduated from the University of Southern California with a major in Business Administration with an emphasis in Data Science and Operations. During his time there, he also obtained a minor in Computer Science. Outside of his coursework, he was also involved in clubs including the Data Science Club and the Club Golf Team. Some of his hobbies include basketball, chess, guitar, and fantasy football.

Professionally, Ro has worked at multiple internships and jobs. His most recent professional experience was at ServiceNow, a Silicon Valley-based tech company, where he worked as a Solutions Consulting Intern. After completing the internship, the company asked him to return part-time (due to school) as a Business Systems Analyst. During these experiences, Ro not only built meaningful relationships but also built upon his interest and skills in the field of analytics.

Ro has absolutely loved his time with the MSBA Class of 2022 due to the tight-knit, collaborative community that the cohort has built. He has honed his analytics skills during his time in the MSBA program, and he is looking to leverage these skills along with his business domain knowledge toward a career. Some industries that Ro is particularly interested in applying his analytics toolkit to include sports, entertainment, and tech.

Ruiwen graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in cognitive science in 2020. She was first attracted to data science when she carried out cognitive science research as an undergraduate research assistant. During sophomore year, Ruiwen joined Duke University’s Cabeza lab and was in charge of designing A/B tests based on previous literature and creating decision-making experiments using MATLAB. In the following year, she put more of her analytical skills into practice when she worked in the Rissman Memory lab at UCLA, where she cleaned experimental data and applied quantitative analysis to experimental results. To further satisfy her curiosity about behavioral data science, Ruiwen took on the role of a research assistant at the Cohen lab for a year after graduation. She examined and studied consumer behavior data to expose the marketing prospects of transforming a novel into a TV show and then presented it to people outside the laboratory. It was at that point in time that she discovered how crucial it is for a data scientist to visualize and interpret data in such a manner that it is clear to people from diverse backgrounds.

Determined to acquire better business sense and learn how to effectively apply her data analysis skills to real-life scenarios, Ruiwen interned as a business analyst intern at TESLA before attending the MSBA program at UCLA. During the internship, she conducted market research and communicated the research result and solution plans cross-functionally with vendors, designers, and store managers, increasing the number of test drives and sales opportunities by a great amount. Furthermore, she evaluated social media data and developed content to improve the firm’s digital marketing performance, creating a spike in web traffic.

Currently, Ruiwen is a first-year student in the Business Analytics Program at Anderson School of UCLA. She is excited for the opportunity to combine her knowledge of behavioral data science to new technical areas such as machine learning, optimization, and customer analytics, which will soon enable her to better examine consumer behavior and decision-making process.

Sai Akhil graduated from BITS Pilani, India in 2019 with a Dual Degree in Computer Science and Economics. Being ardent about business problem-solving and keen to explore interdisciplinary applications of Economics, quantitative analysis and Data Engineering, Sai Akhil joined UCLA MSBA 2022 cohort. He first discovered his passion for Data analytics during his undergraduate career where Sai Akhil interned at GrabOn - a deal and discount platform for online shoppers where he used Analytical tools and Statistical Methods to study the effect of different marketing campaigns on various clusters of users visiting the website daily.  He continued his journey and delved deeper into Machine Learning in his second internship as a part of a Video and Surveillance Technology startup where he used different Machine Learning techniques to solve problems like Automatic Number Plate Recognition and AI-enabled bit encoder for video streaming.

After graduation, he started his professional journey as a Software Engineer at Cohesity - A Secondary Data Management startup, where he was exposed to huge volumes of data churned out from organizations across all domains. This helped him realize the value that lies in these data lakes for Businesses and decision making. Sai Akhil worked extensively on Database Protection & Security as well as cloud storage products used by multiple fortune 500 companies in the Banking and Finance industries. This also enabled him to learn the process of cross-integrating software modules in all domains as well as attain specialized knowledge across all the stages of software development.

The MSBA program has allowed him to uniquely position himself in the market and has offered him a lot of learning opportunities from various industry leaders. Sai Akhil has found Machine Learning for decision making, Big Data Management  and Prescriptive Modeling classes extremely knowledgeable and relevant to the internet industry where his primary interest lies. 

After graduating from USC with a Bachelor's in Aerospace Engineering, Sanders joined Precision Castparts as an manufacturing engineer. During his time in the aerospace casting industry, he saw himself rely increasingly on statistics and data analytics to discover insights and generate impacts. In his free time, he picked up Python and machine learning and began to pivot his career into data science.

Sanders joined UCLA Anderson's MSBA program to further improve both his understanding of data and the fundamental role it plays in business decision-making. He will be joining Meta as a Data Scientist this summer, leveraging the skills he has acquired to uncover and fulfill Meta’s diverse business and product needs.

Jay is from Korea and innovative problem-solver with strong analytical capabilities and passionate in applying AI, data science, and advanced analytics to create new possibilities. He has 7 years of work experience across multiple industries such as start-up, financial services, and consulting. His interest in technology leveraging the power of data brought him to UCLA Anderson to advance his knowledge in the domain of AI and Machine Learning. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Jay began his professional journey working as a product associate at Franklin Templeton Investments. After working at Franklin Templeton for 1 year, he joined a start-up company named Glocom in the analytics team. After Glocom, he joined PwC as a data scientist / Senior Associate in business analytics team. Most recently, he worked at Hyundai Capital as a senior data scientist / Manager. Few highlights of his projects are image forgery detection based on CNN, anomaly detection based on DBSCAN, and predictive model based on Random Forest using NLP.

Overall, Jay is a well-rounded team player with years of experience of collaborating with cross-functional teams and leading several projects in his technical role with creating favorable business outcomes for previous companies. Jay is really excited to join Anderson community and pursue his Masters in Business Analytics at UCLA Anderson. He is looking forward to applying the knowledge learned during the program to help organizations boost their businesses with the help of cutting-edge analytics techniques.

Shirley is a rigorous problem-solver with strong analytical capabilities, driven by intellectual curiosity. She’s passionate about utilizing advanced analytics to gain new knowledge, inspire actionable insights, and develop cutting-edge data science solutions. Before joining the MSBA program, Shirley obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. After graduating, she started her early career at Bytedance, building financial models and leveraging data insights to drive strategic and investment decisions.

Her journey into analytics began with her undergraduate research in Behavioral Data Science, and continued through her recent role as a Strategy and Investment Analyst where the analytic tools and models she built increased the company's M&A deal flow in the E-Commerce and Biopharma sectors. In her undergraduate summer internships, she also provided analytics consulting services in the Entertainment and Digital Marketing spheres. At Shanghai Media Group, she worked on one of Asia’s largest online E-Commerce events to use SQL and Python to segment backend transactional data of 500K+ users and design a specialized marketing campaign. At TargetSocial, a leading data consulting company, she designed an automated WeChat notification system as a digital marketing solution for her client based on NLP models and A/B testing results in Python.

In the MSBA program, Shirley has found the Machine Learning for Decision Making class to be particularly insightful and relevant to Business-Tech and Marketing applications. This summer, she will be joining BCG Gamma as a Summer Data Scientist. She is looking forward to applying her learnings from Prescriptive Modeling and Optimization to solve real world business problems.

Shreyeshi is an experienced Data Analyst with over five years in the industry. She has worked for some of the leading startups in India across e-commerce, food-delivery, and ed-tech domains. She graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering in 2016. 

Her first stint as an Analyst came at an early-stage e-commerce startup. As one of the team's founding members, she helped set up the data pipeline for everyday reporting, gathering valuable knowledge in BI Reports and Data Warehousing. While her initial role demanded that she be a jack of all trades, she later focused her efforts on Inventory Management. She single-handedly set up the inventory management system using Time Series Analyses and ETL processes. In her subsequent experiences, she has worked with business stakeholders across many areas, like Renewals for a subscription-based program and Product Analytics focusing on A/B testing. In addition, she is skilled in data storytelling and loves collaborating with technical and non-technical audiences to help business leaders make sound data-driven decisions. 

After gaining valuable business experience, Shreyeshi decided to pursue her Master's at UCLA Anderson to advance her technical skills. She is excited about Optimization techniques and Prescriptive Analytics and is looking forward to applying her education in the Tech Industry. 

Cindy graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics & Statistics, and minor in Advertising. She is passionate about exploring the areas where cutting-edge quantitative theory and computational tools can be leveraged to transform the marketing activities.

Cindy gained some data analytics experience during her internship experience at Tencent. She helped improve business models by analyzing consumer behaviors and market trends. She also solved complex business problems and managed international, cross-functional projects using advanced analytical skills during her summer intern at PwC.

Prior to joining the MSBA program, she also spent a year in UCLA’s Master of Applied Statistics program, where she consolidated her knowledge in statistics, and explored her interests in the data-driven world. She then decided to join the MSBA program to enhance her skill sets in data analytics. To her, the program is the perfect place for her to combine and strengthen all she has learned before, for instance, machine learning modelling and prescriptive analytics, as well as to advance her programming languages skills, such as SQL, Python and R.

Cindy is eager to bolster her business intuition, communication and leadership skills. She also hopes to develop the ability to ask relevant questions, the answers to which can unlock value for companies, consumers, and society. 

Suchita is from India and grew up in Indore, M.P. She did her bachelor’s in Computer Science engineering. Post that she worked as a business analyst and management consultant for four years. Currently, she is pursuing her master’s in Business Analytics from UCLA Anderson.

As an undergraduate, she took part in various club activities on the campus. She credits a lot of her overall personality development to the experiences while organizing workshops and events for these clubs, which taught her some of the key values like resiliency, leadership, and perseverance.

After graduating, she joined ZS Associates as a Business Operations Associate. At ZS, Suchita got to work with few Fortune 500 companies in the Healthcare sector. She worked on several projects focused to provide data-driven solutions to client’s questions and increase efficiency and accuracy of operational systems. This is where she fell in love with the world of data analytics and the art of solving real world business problems using data. As she started independently managing projects, she realized that applying quantitative methods without asking the right business questions is an exercise in futility. She joined Business Analytics program at UCLA Anderson to gain expertise in advanced analytics and the business acumen required to appreciate the intricacies of business world.

An important aspect of her life is to work towards gender equality and for women's rights. As a child, she had a great example in her mother. Being a pediatrician, promoting child immunization and nutrition to the remote areas of our state was a constant endeavor of her mother. She would organize monthly camps to educate parents and kids about child healthcare. Having accompanied her mother to some of these camps, Suchita saw this as an opportunity to reach to a lot of girls and speak to them about gender equality and education. She was also a part of the Women’s leadership initiative at ZS and believes that – “As women, we need to encourage, support, and enable other women to pursue their aspirations both personally and professionally”. She would continue to work for this to the best of her capacity both at and outside of work.

At UCLA, Suchita is the VP of International Student Relations of her class and hopes to bring in some long-lasting reforms for some of the challenges that international students face.

The MSBA program is proving to be a very important phase of Suchita’s career as she is learning new techniques and concepts regularly. It’s incredibly fulfilling for her to translate complex business problems into data problems and solve them using state of the art techniques. She is focused on helping clients to make intelligent and actionable decisions by modeling data-driven businesses through data science and machine learning.

In closing, Suchita is a team player with the experience of collaborating with cross-functional teams and leading with influence with a track record of generating favorable business outcomes for previous companies. Outside of school and work, you will either find her trying out a new cuisine at a local restaurant or binge watching ‘The Office’.

Vicky is currently a master student majoring in Business Analytics at UCLA Anderson. Prior to UCLA, Vicky has 4+ years of professional experience in cybersecurity consulting serving Fortune 500 companies. The consulting experience has equipped Vicky with hands-on experience working with large data sets using SQL and data visualization techniques. In helping clients with various scales achieving their strategic objectives, Vicky delivered quantitative and qualitative analysis tailored to specific business challenges and translated the insights into actionable recommendations that drove key decisions. She was also a key player in leading go-to-market campaigns that focused on product solution development which involved functional testing, end-user experience analysis and outcome visualization.

Vicky is excited about the next data challenge to drive real-world product development and improvement leveraging the past consulting experience with data-mining skill sets acquired from UCLA Anderson. 

After completing a bachelor’s degree in Honours Mathematics from UBC and a Master of Science degree in Management of Technology from NYU, Wanlin is now a MSBA student at UCLA Anderson where she believes she will hone her Data Analytics skills during the program. Wanlin worked as a Data Scientist at a start-up in New York before joining the MSBA program. She has an interdisciplinary background in science, technology, and business. She is an analytical problem solver with hands-on experiences. She can apply quantitative methods to solve complex predictive problems through forecasting, modeling, and business management. 

Xian joins UCLA Anderson as a MSBA student after working as business analyst for 2 years. She believes that data spins the world. Data analysis is not only a fundamental part of optimal decision making but is also the building blocks for companies to identify new insights for market growth. In addition to curriculums, she runs social media analysis to further advance her interests. 

I am a graduate student at UCLA Anderson School of Management with a major in Business Analytics. I graduated from the University of California, Davis with a major in statistics one year ago and joined the UC Davis Health Center research program as a data analyst research assistant. There, I worked with medical professionals to solve problems regarding machine learning research of E-cigarettes health risks and specialized data visualization techniques. I also had an internship at Hang Seng Bank earlier this year; it's a Hong Kong-based financial services company of the HSBC Group. There, I had a chance to join a data scientist team that aims on seeking advanced Machine Learning solutions for credit card fraud detection. 

I am savvy with data through my exposure to various data science projects, strong academic performance and previous work experience. I am excited about opportunities that start my career in the data science field.

UCLA Anderson School of Management, Class of 2022. Master of Business Analytics (MSBA).

UCSB (University of California, Santa Barbara), Class of 2020. B.S in Applied Math. Minor in Statistical Science. 

I am a data analyst who focuses on marketing analytics, statistical modeling, machine learning, forecasting and optimization. I am a problem solver who bridges communication gaps by simplifying and explaining complex problems to different types of audiences. My goal is to use simple stuff to solve hard questions. 

Programming:
Python, SQL, R, Tableau, Spark, Hadoop/Hive, TensorFlow, Python Scripting, MongoDB

Expertise:
AB Testing, Statistics, Machine-learning approaches(Random Forest, GBM, xgBoost, Neural networks, Deep learning), Regression, Classification, Clustering, Data Visualization, NLP

Yajie is a highly motivated data analyst with a strong foundation in statistical modeling, passionate about data storytelling. She graduated from University of California - San Diego in June 2021 with a bachelor’s degree Joint Mathematics and Economics. Having taken extensive courses and worked on various projects in Statistics and Data Science during her undergraduate studies, she realized her interest in leveraging data to address business problems. Seeking to expand her knowledge in quantitative analysis and hone her skills in data manipulation and data storytelling, Yajie chose to join the Business Analytics program at UCLA Anderson School of Management. 

Before joining the program, Yajie gained a wide range of industrial knowledge and professional experience during her undergraduate studies. In summer of 2020, she worked as a Supply Chain Data Analyst Intern at The Coca-Cola Company. She worked cross-functionally with data scientists and Supply Chain managers to help improve ingredients supply-demand ratio by analyzing sales data and building prediction model. She extensively utilized Python and R to apply data cleaning and statistical modeling on large-scale dataset to extract valuable business insights and suggest business recommendations. At the same time, she improved her skills in data visualization and communication between tech and non-tech audience by building dashboards to communicate findings to cross-functional teams.

The program equipped Yajie with solid background in manipulating large amount of data to approach business problems and translating data insights into actionable business solutions for better decision making. She will continue to learn to implement the most suitable models and technical procedures to address business problems. She is eager to apply her data analytics skills she learned in UCLA Anderson to real-world business problems.

Yannie graduated Cum Laude Honors with a bachelor’s in finance from University of Illinois at Chicago. During her undergraduate studies, she has built a strong quantitative background and developed a solid foundation in problem-solving and financial analytical skills. After finished her bachelor’s degree, she worked as a financial data analyst in a premier commercial real estate company and focused on real estate pricing prediction, accounting data management, and process improvement. Afterwards, she joined one of the leading food wholesalers and distributors as a Business Intelligence Analyst. There, she focused on inventory optimization, website analytics, and personalized shopping experience, and had experience in conducting market analysis to come up with product and company growth strategies. She became intrigued by the role of data science analytics after noticing how technology innovation and data-driven approaches impact business. This motivated her to pursue the MSBA degree at UCLA Anderson. 

From UCLA MSBA’s curriculum, she has acquired a solid understanding of machine learning, database management, and statistical analytic. Besides coursework, she has also completed complicated data science projects like Predicting Movies’ Worldwide Box Office Success, Predicting Bike Sharing Demand, and Cosmetics Recommendation System Based on Ingredients. She is also proficient in Python, SQL, R and has a deep understanding of product sense and A/B testing. Data science analytics is her ideal career because she can combine her curiosity and hand-on technical skills with her passion for impacting people, company, and society. With the continued advancement of global data innovations, she will make positive contributions to the industry while enhancing her knowledge in technology-based, data-driven business decisions to fulfill company needs. 

Yasemin Yurekli studied Financial Economics at Columbia University. During her time at Columbia University, Yasemin explored a variety of career paths in companies like Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Oliver Wyman, and Ralph Lauren. Realizing that her true passion is startups, Yasemin joined an InsurTech startup in New York as a Business Analyst. Yasemin worked with prominent Fortune 500 insurance companies to help them innovate their health insurance buying journeys. 

Understanding that she can best leverage her communication skills, analytical mindset, and business acumen in a product management role, she shifted to a product manager role in a SaaS sales automation company called TeamGram. During her time as a product manager, she oversaw the design, development, and launch of a CPQ product called TeamGram Doks that currently drives 20% of the new revenue of the company.

UCLA's MSBA program has helped Yasemin to understand how she can leverage data to inform new ideas, create better user experiences, and ultimately make better business decisions. 

In her free time, Yasemin loves playing tennis, analyzing pop culture, or talking all things crypto.

Yash Bhatia graduated from the University of Mumbai with a Computer Engineering degree in 2018. During the undergraduate course, he interned with an e-commerce company in a Search Engine Marketing role where he got his first taste of business analytics. He assisted the team with finding insights about bids, products and how to invest wisely on Paid Search. After completing his undergraduate course, Yash joined BNP Paribas as a software engineer in a data warehousing team. This opportunity exposed him to database management concepts, ETL tools and the backbone of the analytics industry, SQL. As his interests grew, he involved himself with big data projects and started exploring cloud platforms.

Through the professional experiences and strong technical foundations gained, he realized he desired a multifaceted profile and could learn a key fundamental which was crucial to analytics and data-driven methodologies i.e. thinking from a functional perspective to help drive businesses in the long run. After three years of solidifying his technical expertise, he decided to pursue Business Analytics from UCLA. At UCLA Anderson, Yash is gaining insightful knowledge about statistical techniques for analysis and gathering business acumen through subjects like Business Fundamentals. This will allow Yash to formulate a flexible and versatile profile with a solid technical background along with the business acumen he needs to apply for industry analytics. Yash is very excited to pursue Data Engineering / Business Intelligence roles in the future helping companies leverage maximum amounts of data in a cost-effective way.

Apart from academics and professional experience, Yash has joined the UCLA Anderson Business Analytics Association as Director of Career helping members to hone their technical skill set. In his free time, he likes to play and watch soccer, binge watch movies and tv shows and enjoys catching up with friends and family.

Prior to attending university, Yasmin was a professional rhythmic gymnast representing Egypt as a member of Egypt's National Team. After her rhythmic gymnastics career, she attended Alexandria University where she earned her bachelor's degree in accounting with the highest honors, and San Francisco State University where she earned her MBA with a graduate certificate in finance. During her role as an investment banker at GS Capital, Yasmin discovered her passion for data-driven decision-making and interest in leveraging the power of data science to help entrepreneurs and startups achieve their growth potential. She strives to uncover patterns and trends that point to long-term growth opportunities by leveraging advanced machine learning techniques and data-driven models. Consequently, Yasmin is currently pursuing her Master of Science in Business Analytics from UCLA's Anderson School of Management to further advance her analytical and technical skills.

In addition to her coursework, Yasmin actively participates in hackathons, and case competitions in order to keep growing her skills both academically and professionally. She is an ardent investor in the stock market and enjoys finding diamond-in-the-rough high-growth companies for long-term investment. Finally, she serves as an International Gymnastics Judge and enjoys judging the African and European championships when time and travel permit.

Kevin graduated from Tsinghua University in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a Master of Finance degree. During that time, he found his interest in bringing technology innovations with data-driven approaches and realized the power of leveraging data in supporting business decisions.

Kevin gained a wide range of professional experience during his undergraduate and graduate studies. He started working as an Investment Banking Intern at China International Capital Corporation and China Securities Co. Ltd. Then he interned at Apple with the Sales team, delivering an ad-hoc analysis on sales data and introducing Tableau dashboards to support decisions.

In the future, he hopes to combine financial and data analysis backgrounds to engage in the financial technology industry and use advanced machine learning models to help companies make business decisions. He will continue to learn how to choose appropriate models for various business questions and apply her knowledge and understanding in his future career as a data scientist.

Erin has 5 years of experience working as financial analyst and senior consultant before joining the MSBA program at UCLA Anderson. During her time as a senior at KPMG, she led teams to work for clients in different industries including financial institutions, real estate, life science, and others, where she gained knowledge about business operations and products. She also obtained the designation of Chartered Public Accountant, demonstrating her business acumen, analytical mindset, and problem-solving skills. 

In her previous experience providing consultative recommendations to her company and clients, she has demonstrated strong abilities to solve business problems in ambiguous settings with an analytical mind, such as identifying goals through working cross-functionally and giving reasonable suggestions using financial data analysis. Through these professional experiences, she found her interest and passion in using insights extracted from data to solve real-world problems, and she decided to pursue a career in the data science field. 

At UCLA Anderson, Erin has developed proficiency in multiple programming and database languages, data visualization platforms as well as big data tools. She also has decent experience in data storytelling for non-technical audiences. 

This summer, Erin will be joining Pinterest as a Product Analyst, during which she will design and implement experiments such as AB testing to explore user behavior and trends.