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Data analytics: It’s not just a young person’s game

A conversation with Eric Bradlow, vice dean of analytics, Wharton School
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For the past few years, there’s been a big demand for data analysts. Indeed reported in late 2018 that for every 1,000 job postings looking for data scientists there were 600 people looking for that job. In short, demand is outpacing supply, and in the words of this week’s guest on Work in Progress, “it is one of the jobs that is recession-proof.”

Eric Bradlow is the Vice Dean of Analytics for the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He says, simply, there is a data scientist shortage that is going to continue to grow.

“Every industry needs people that can learn how to ingest data and analyze data—help companies make business decisions through data. It’s a set of skills that you would think, ‘Wow, you hear all these people doing data science.’ No, there’s actually a shortage of people that can do data science.”

“So as data science becomes a deeper and even more rich field, I think even more companies are going to have need for data scientists.”

Bradlow says there is so much demand, there are so many routes to the job, and no age limitations.

“I’m not convinced that it’s something that you have to have a four-year full-time degree on. You can get our certificate in data science. A lot of companies offer this,” he tells me.

“I know many people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, that are starting to get into data science. So it’s not just a young person’s game. So to me it’s the future of many businesses. It’s seen as one of those, as I said, recession-proof types of opportunities, as long as the person is willing to take their skills and apply them to lots of different industries.”

Data Analytics and COVID-19

Those skills are playing a big role in understanding the spread of COVID-19 and in making decisions on how we should respond to the disease to prevent it from spreading further.

Bradlow says data analysts are helping us understand the spread rate, the rate at which people are showing symptoms, then serious complications, and then the death rate.

“Statistical models. Data analytics. They’re a decision-support tools. They’re not meant to replace decision makers. They’re meant to support decision makers…who are going to have to weigh, “Do you open up the economy? Do we each as individuals put ourselves under risk?”

One More Thing…

In addition to being the Vice Dean of Analytics at Wharton, Bradlow is also the co-host of the Wharton Moneyball podcast which looks at the sports as a game of numbers. Sports is made up of statistics. It is also a business. If you are a sports fan, stick around for the end of the podcast when Bradlow and I discuss what data analytics is telling us about when and how baseball and other sports can start up again.

You can listen to Work in Progress here, or find us wherever you find your podcasts.

Episode 132: Eric Bradlow, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Vice Dean of Analytics
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.