Masters Spotlight

Lauren Richardson

Research and Analysis skills are something I always think of when thinking of Dedman. In my role at Schwab, I often end up going to look into new things or trying to find a new way to do something effectively and quickly. In Dedman I really learned how to create a process when researching a problem or designing a solution that has really helped me in my day-to-day job. I learned there were often multiple ways of arriving at a solution, and being able to solve a problem different ways was a huge asset. One of the biggest things I also learned how to do in Dedman was to document how I arrived at a solution or process. Documentation can be so important as projects move forward and being able to do it right off the bat really helped me settle into my job. 

I use a lot of the coding skills I learned in Dedman as well.  I don’t specifically use R on a day-to-day basis anymore, but learning R, SAS and other languages really helped me pick up a lot of other coding languages quickly.  Additionally, a lot of the data processing skills I learned in Dedman have helped me in my job.  Good data is so important for a variety of business applications and Dedman gave me a strong foundation to build on in that area. 

The courses I think back on the most were some of my econometric and data analysis courses.  Not just for the coding skills but also for the models I learned how to create and interpret.  The fields of machine learning and data algorithms are changing and expanding rapidly, and my professors really taught me what mathematical and economic principles they were built on. Learning how these models worked and being able to create models of my own really set me up for success.