Why leave the comfort of what you know and jump wholeheartedly into the realm of that awkward, unstable feeling of learning something entirely new?
The more I learned the more I wanted to know.
For the Love of Data
I’ve worked in tech for almost 20 years. To write that seems odd. Although I’ve worked in tech, I feel like I’ve been doing it from the sidelines. How?? No actual tech…no programming, coding or engineering otherwise. I started as an admin working for a tech company just after I was married thinking I’d work for a bit and go home and have kids. To say the gig was too sweet to walk away is an understatement. Because they were a tech company, work/life balance is the culture and working remote is the way things get done…. and it was FUN! The initiative I was supporting was in it’s infancy stage and has since grown to serve over 10 million in 180 countries by providing education, technical training and career mentorship. I was an admin: I built and operated budgets, wrote and managed contracts, and coordinated projects. I helped test links, and was one of the first to complete the very technical course as it was developed. Although I loved the idea that lives were changed by learning technology and it was the core of what we were working towards, the content itself never took hold of me as something I wanted to pursue. I was thrilled I could support something from the sidelines that made such positive change in so many. Once that initiative grew, scaled and normalized I moved with my team who specialized in education to support grant making from both the corporate and foundation portfolios.
I fell in love the second I fell into the opportunity. Philanthropy is where my heart is! Again, I found myself supporting and administering tech initiatives in education. I was once again surrounded by programs advancing incredible innovations through technology to improve outcomes in literally millions each year. I learned first hand about the importance of collecting and analyzing the right information to drive deeper and more meaningful impact. Information is VERY powerful. My love for data began.
I developed metrics, created tracking systems and found myself digging into how and why ed-tech programs succeed and or don’t. I analysed how much we invested, at which stage of innovation, subcategories of investment types… how many we reached, and began to dig into who and how those reached were impacted: demographics, ages, genders, and efficacy of interventions - looking for improvements in attendance, behaviors and performance.. increased interest and persistence in subject matter… it was a slippery slope and I was hooked. I would find myself slicing and dicing outcomes in various K-12 education disciplines, then taking the data and compiling reports to illustrate outcomes and efficacy of not only the programs we supported, but looking at the big picture of the support collectively. What were our biggest wins? Why? I watched how some of our biggest ‘losers’ informed future decisions. I watched how informed decisions help to make improvements in efficiencies help small organizations do big, meaningful work. I noticed that data is the way of the world now - that proof of efficacy is magic when it comes to attracting more support from partners in many different ways. It’s how a well planned, organized and forward thinking organization makes decisions and tell their stories. Organizations like http://gooru.org/about/ and https://talkingpts.org/ are terrific examples - go check ‘em out!
I love this work… did I mention that?? It’s rewarding. I’ve grown to know it and some of it I can do in my sleep. And now.. I wanted to be a different part of it… I want to learn and know more. I want to not just support it from an administrative perspective.. but getting off my imaginary side-lines and doing deeper work to illustrate, inform or identify an opportunity to make real, impact-causing change. I realized that I’ve taken it as far as I could from my rudimentary, self-taught means and needed the additional skills I was learning about from the sidelines. The technical ones that the tech-company I work for talk about all the time that’s happening in the significan evolution of the labour market forcasted over the next 10 years https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/csr/research-resources/ai-us-jobs.html- and we don’t fully know all the jobs of the future. . . The coding, machine learning, predictive modeling… oh my!
I realize that I need to know more. So I’m taking the next step. I’m learning…