Analytics Leadership and Soft Skills

Kaiser Fung

Director, Master of Science in Applied Analytics
Columbia University

Ethics And Privacy In The World Of Data And Analytics Panel

Businesses and organizations are collecting, storing and mediating access to exploding volumes of private data, as managers strive to gain competitive advantages by incorporating data into their decision-making processes. In the last year, several scandals, such as the cheating software found in Volkswagen vehicles, deceptive data policies at Ashley Madison, and the refusal by Theranos to disclose scientific data on its finger-prick blood tests, have exposed the urgent need to visit ethical and privacy concerns in the world of data and analytics. This talk presents some frameworks to address these concerns, as well as case examples that demonstrate their complexity. Panelists offers additional viewpoints.

Bio

Kaiser Fung is the director of the new Master of Science in Applied Analytics at Columbia University. He is the creator of Junk Charts, an influential blog on data visualization, as well as author of two books on statistical thinking, Numbers Rule Your World and Numbersense. He writes the Statbusters column in the Daily Beast with Andrew Gelman; and his work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, American Scientist, Slate, Wired, FiveThirtyEight and CNN. He is an advisor of rSQUAREedge, which provides real-world education and career-building mentorship to people looking to enter the exploding data science and analytics field.

Jeffrey Kline

Professor of Practice, Operations Research
Naval Postgraduate School

Owl Speaks Lion: Communicating Analytical Results to Senior Decision Makers

Ever finish a brilliant analytical briefing to a senior leader in your organization only to be met with a look of total bewilderment? Communicating analytical results to decision makers is the most critical step in the analytical process to ensure the work is impactful. This discussion highlights lessons learned (some through hard knocks) in providing analytical information to influence decisions. It covers:

• Presenting analytics to support decision making.
• Communicating the usefulness of analytics to senior leaders.

Although most examples in this presentation are government or service oriented, the themes they provide are relevant to business analytics as well.

Bio

Twenty six years as a naval officer, commanding two ships, and serving as a naval analyst in the Office of Secretary of Defense, Jeff Kline has been both decision maker and analytic practitioner. Jeff is a Professor of Practice in the Naval Postgraduate School’s Operations Research department. He provides the Navy’s senior leadership executive education in analytics and risk assessment and instructs junior officers in campaign analysis. His NPS faculty awards include the Navy’s Superior Civilian Service medal, 2011 Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) Award for Teaching of OR Practice, 2009 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Homeland Security Award, 2007 Hamming Award for interdisciplinary research, 2007 Wayne E. Meyers Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering Research, and the 2005 Northrop Grumman Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering.

Irvin Lustig

Optimization Principal
Princeton Consultants

Change Management for Analytics Projects

To gain the acceptance of analytics used for decision support, analytics professionals should use organizational change management principles. This talk provides advice to these professionals on these principles as they work with key users to gain acceptance of analytics. These ideas are drawn from the collective observations and insights of practitioners with decades of experience in the development and deployment of analytic methods for improved decision making.

Bio

Dr. Irv Lustig is an internationally recognized leader in Operations Research and Advanced Analytics. He was one of the original developers of CPLEX, now part of IBM. In addition to software development at CPLEX Optimization, Inc., Dr. Lustig has been a member of the faculty of Princeton University, a software product manager at ILOG, Vice President of ILOG Direct, and part of IBM Research’s Business Analytics and Mathematical Sciences Division. He has had extensive experience in working with clients to realize the benefits of applying optimization and analytics to create business advantage.

Greta Roberts

CEO
Talent Analytics, Corp.
INFORMS Analytics Certification Board Member

Your Place in the Future of Workforce Analytics

Human Resources is feeling the pressure. Predictive Analytics in HR’s future, but it not yet clear how HR will get there.

As practitioners, we need to carry a clear sense of how to bring the organization forward into this new world. Projects and Data need to be focused properly to build business value and win trust. Greta will present a vision of predictive workforce analytics that is business-focused and deeply integrated into company operations.

She will walk through a variety of workforce analytics strategies, sorting out the landscape for managers and practitioners alike. She will lead the way from inward-focused metrics such as “time to fill” to enterprise focused concepts such as “employee lifetime value.”

Workforce Analytics is a new and vital part of the larger predictive analytics community – we can learn from these other domains and grow with them. Come learn a bit about the future of Workforce Analytics as well as practical strategies for how to create that future at your organization and how to take advantage of the credentialed workforce of the Certified Analytics Professionals and Associate Certified Analytics Professionals.

Bio

Greta Roberts is an influential pioneer of the field of predictive workforce analytics where she creates solutions and dialogue between the predictive analytics and workforce communities.

Since co-founding Talent Analytics in 2001, CEO Greta has successfully established the firm as the recognized employee predictions leader, both pre- and post-hire, on the strength of its powerful predictive analytics approach and innovative Advisor™ software platform designed to solve complex employee attrition and performance challenges. Greta has a penchant for identifying strategic opportunities to innovate and stay ahead of the curve as evident in the firm’s early direction to use predictive analytics to solve “line of business” challenges instead of “HR” challenges and model business outcomes instead of HR outcomes.

Greta is a Board Member of the INFORMS Analytics Certification Board, Chair of Predictive Analytics World for Workforce, and a Faculty member with the International Institute for Analytics (IIA).

Follow Greta on twitter @GretaRoberts.

Erick D. Wikum

Principal Scientist
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Innovate Lab

Making Analytics Work Through Practical Project Management

Consistently delivering timely value with analytics requires effective project management. When it comes to delivering analytics, what matters is not only what you do, but also how you do it. Analytics projects are just that, projects, so general project management guidelines apply. And yet, analytics projects include unique aspects pertaining to subject matter, inventive activities and estimation which require corresponding tailored approaches. In this session, we present two practical approaches to structure and manage analytics projects and illustrate those approaches through cases studies which draw on the experience of the author.

Bio

Erick D. Wikum is a Principal Scientist within the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Innovation Lab in Cincinnati, OH. The focus of his research is supply chain applications, especially omni-channel retail. Dr. Wikum has over 20 years of experience with TCS, IBM, Schneider, Norfolk Southern and the U.S. Air Force applying Operations Research and analytics techniques to help people and organizations make better, data-driven decisions. As leader of numerous analytics projects, he gained an understanding of the critical importance of project management and of addressing unique aspects of analytics projects for success.

Analytics Leadership and Soft Skills

Kaiser Fung

Jeffrey Kline

Irvin Lustig

Greta Roberts

Erick D. Wikum

Focused Tracks