I graduated from UMKC in the spring of 2006 with a B.S. in Mathematics and Statistics. I was hired soon thereafter as an intern at H&R Block’s corporate office in Kansas City, working on the resource analytics team to help forecast demand driving call center staffing models. After interning for the summer, I was immediately hired into a fulltime position. In this position, I was given charge of that demand forecasting; I needed to predict, down to 15 minute intervals, the number of people required to handle millions of potential contacts over a wildly fluctuating business model and across several lines of business within a certain SLA. This was key to determining a multimillion dollar budget, driven by the hiring of 1,000+ FTE at peak demand, and purchasing advanced IVR technology to help meet that demand. It was certainly intimidating to take these predictions to high level directors and explain the reasoning behind spending several million dollars. In this job, I leaned heavily on my skills gained at UMKC: beyond the statistics, I also needed to be highly effective at communication, group presentation, and fluent in business models. I was able to make use of several statistical packages including SAS and Minitab, and combined with the investigative nature of the forecasting job, this turned out to be a rewarding, challenging, and educational work experience.
In late 2007 I shifted gears and switched jobs to Quintiles, which was closer to where I lived in Olathe, and presented some new challenges to take on. I was hired there as a SAS programmer for clinical trial data, which leveraged the SAS programming skills I had gained at H&R Block. In this role, I program transformations on clinical data in preparation for statistical analysis, program listings to clean data before that analysis, and build libraries of reusable, dynamic code to drive process improvement and efficiency. Over the past eight years here I have been promoted up to a Principal Analyst, the top-tier for the technical side of SAS programming in Data Management. I now oversee a large global team delivering across a wide range of customer portfolios. I am the global SAS Subject Matter Expert within the Data Management group, am leading several major system improvement initiatives, and serve on our global process-setting team. I’ve been able to travel overseas to multiple locations (India, in particular), mentoring and training key team members at various sites. Our group has seen significant growth and development both locally and globally over the past eight years as the result of our team’s work. I’m happy to be able to contribute with impact to maintaining Quintiles as the global leader in Clinical Research Organizations.
I look back on my time at UMKC fondly and am glad for the opportunities that have come afterwards which UMKC helped prepare me for. I’m grateful for the quality of education I received as a result of the outstanding faculty, especially in the Mathematics department. My classes with Dr. Delaware, Dr. Hall, and Dr. Sega especially stand out as being challenging, well-presented, and intellectually satisfying. I strongly hope someday to return to UMKC for my Master’s degree in either Statistics or Computer Science.
[While an undergraduate at UMKC, on Nov. 11, 2005, David gave a talk in the department Expository Talks Series titled: "Joseph Liouville's 1851 Exhibition of the First Transcendental Number".]
David Jackson