Alexa Foote

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I am currently working as a Senior Data Scientist at Nielsen. This position resides in Brand Effect, which is part of Nielsen’s global Data Science Watch organization, maximizing clients’ advertising effectiveness across TV and digital platforms. I am responsible for measuring the memorability and quality of clients’ advertisements to improve their return on investment. My work primarily focuses on performing custom statistical research and analysis using various sampling, modeling, and hypothesis testing methods. Doing this involves extracting data from Oracle databases using SQL and writing Python/R programs to manipulate and analyze data.

After graduating from Saint Michael’s, I enrolled in Purdue University’s Master of Science in Applied Statistics program and graduated in May 2015. As part of my acceptance I was offered a teaching assistantship, including a stipend and a tuition waiver. During my two-year assistantship, I had a variety of roles and responsibilities, including conducting and grading introductory statistical methods recitation labs and instructing an introductory probability course for business majors. Being a TA as well as an instructor for undergraduate statistics classes not only solidified my knowledge of different statistical methods but it also built my confidence and leadership, making me comfortable in positions where responsibility, discernment, and strong interpersonal skills are essential. In addition to my teaching responsibilities, I took courses which emphasized statistical methodologies and inference, and computational statistics.

My Saint Michael’s mathematics education provided me with the foundation of knowledge to succeed in graduate school and at Nielsen. The quantitative training and creative problem solving skills that I obtained from my coursework at SMC have taught me to look at data with an open mind. Data analysis has so many facets and approaches, and there are often multiple ways to find the solution to a problem. My education has taught me that it’s not about getting the right answer right away, but rather taking the time to think critically and understand all the possible solutions to a problem first. This approach to problem solving and the statistical skills I learned at Saint Michael’s have been invaluable, and I apply them every day.