Upskilling With Data Analytics Skills | Graduate Spotlight

For the last three years, Caitlyn Brown of Part-time Data Analytics Cohort 6 worked as a Senior Customer Success Manager for a K-12 learning analytics platform. She shares in her podcast interview that she applied to Nashville Software School (NSS) to help her better understand the process of transforming raw data into actionable insights. 

I look forward to using these new skills to help design process schemas and products that drive value for customers!"

What was your favorite part of your NSS experience?

“I love that NSS really helped me connect a lot of the dots in the work that I do. My role before NSS was primarily customer-facing, so my time and attention was really focused on the end product of the analytics solutions that we provide. The Data Analytics Bootcamp really introduced me to the other side of the process - collecting, cleaning, organizing, and analyzing data.” 

What was the topic of your capstone and how did you choose it?

“Public K-12 School Enrollment and its Effect on the Funding Landscape - I chose this topic for my capstone because my enrollment at NSS was all about upskilling and being able to provide an even better level of service to my customers in school districts around the country. About 18 months ago I was talking to a school CIO and he mentioned wanting to start taking a look at software costs because he was anticipating a significant budget cut for the upcoming school year. When I asked what made him think a budget decrease of that size was coming he said that he'd just received the official enrollment numbers for that school year. I knew that student enrollment was one slice of the funding pie for our public schools, but I hadn't really considered the level of impact that enrollment fluctuations can have on a district's bottom line from year-to-year. This capstone project gave me the tools and opportunity to really investigate the relationship between enrollment and funding.” 

​​What advice would you give to current or incoming NSS Students? 

“Keep your goals in mind and really leverage all of the resources that are available to you.”

HIRED

After graduation, Caitlyn was able to move into a new role at the company where she worked that she could put her new skills in data analytics to use! “What I’m really excited to do is now take my experience from working with customers,” she shares. “It going to be nice to have a couple of different buckets of hands-on experience to be able to draw from to start tackling what the future of [my company] can look like from a new perspective.” 

Hear all about how Caitlyn was able to gain the skills she needed to make the transition her new role at her company by listening to her podcast below! 

Meet more of the graduates from Part-time Data Analytics Cohort 6 by visiting their class website!