About

I am a classically-trained musician that has an MS in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences from South Dakota State University and a BS in Biology from Kennesaw State University. I am a creative, quantitative individual that enjoys working with data, programming in Python and R, and building and learning new things. I consider myself to be a life-long learner and I like to have an open mind for new experiences, technologies, and opportunities.

In my free time, I enjoy flatpicking guitar and fingerstyle blues, playing with my dogs, hiking, and fishing. In fact, flyfishing for trout in North Georgia is what prompted me to enter the fisheries science field. I wanted to know why I caught fish here but not over there, on this fly but not that fly. I consumed much of the popular literature on how and where to catch fish and eventually found myself butting my head against the scientific literature. Discussions with friends prompted me to go back to school to study fisheries. It was a great way to combine my passion for being outside (i.e., field work), my normal curiosity, and of course, fishing.

Career Arc

By education and experience, I am a quantitative scientist. In reverise chronological order, some of my past jobs have included (but are not limited to):

  • Senior data scientist at a big tech company (with which you’re definitely familiar)
  • Director of data science at a patient-focused healthcare firm undergoing a technology reannaissance, a great greenfield opp
  • Data science consultant for a financial and management consulting firm.
  • Founder of an environmentally-focused startup
  • Biometrician with a environmental and statistical consulting firm
  • Research assistant at a northern Rocky Mountain university

I’ve enjoyed all of the positions I’ve held. Indeed, I learned during my tenure as a biometrician that working with large data sets and discovering new things about those data sets was really what floated my boat. Combining that discovery mentality with my enjoyment of writing code, developing new products, and helping people learn new things and I work in a great industry.

Most of data analysis is a puzzle. Building new things is a puzzle. Building new data frameworks and infrastructure is a puzzle. “I have X problem. Steven, will you solve it for me?” Those kinds of puzzles are fun to solve. I’m looking for more of those now. With data, I can answer a lot of questions! Heck, even without data, I bet that together, we can get at a pretty good approximation!