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Essay 1: What excites you most about your intended field of study?
As a co-founder of a startup, I face with several different business questions everyday. To name a few, questions such as which direction to take, where to focus, what are the market's needs, what are the future trends, etc. are the concerns that keep me awake most of the nights. In my own personal experience at MindLA, I have been able to collect a massive amount of both numerical and textual user data through multiple data-gathering sessions from more than 1000 subjects in the past 8 months. The data gathering phase required plenty of monetary and human resources including trainings, pilot testing, planning, organizing, managing and running the sessions. Yet, all of these efforts would have meant nothing if we were not able to extract and analyze the strategic data we would need to determine our product direction based on the need of our target population. I personally feel the surge to improve my understanding of the analytical techniques in the business world because I realize that without information intelligence we would not be able to compete with our business competitors.
What is appealing to me is that the skill sets that I can acquire as a business analyst can be utilized in a broad range of industries. Whether working in technology world, banking and finance, insurance, health care, etc. there will be always a need for someone who can bridge the gap between high level business planning and the pool of information through analysis, visualization and communication. However familiar with the basic concepts and techniques, I am looking for a
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competitive capacity that could provide me with the necessary advanced skills that I will need to be able to uncover profound capabilities of data analysis in the business intelligence; an academic program that would help me to connect the dots between my analytical understanding and business decision making challenges that I am facing through practical solid trainings.
Essay 2: What do you see yourself doing professionally upon graduation and how will a degree from Santa Clara help you achieve these aspirations? My short-term goal in pursuing Business Analytics is to learn advanced analytical techniques that I could apply to the data I gathered in my start-up to better inform our future product directions. I would like to be able to apply the technical lessons to our existing business data and gain insights that could drive our business planning. My long-term goals, however, are to harness deep practical understanding of machine learning and predictive modeling that I could employ in a wide range of industries. Ultimately, I plan to continue my entrepreneurship adventure in the intersection of Fintech and Medtech by relying on both business and analytical skills I will practice during the BA program at Leavey. After an extensive research, I found that The Santa Clara University MSBA curriculum offers what I need to advance my career in the fields of strategic decision-making and analytics.
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Essay 3: Discuss any attributes, experiences, or interests that would enable you to make a distinctive contribution to the school and/or business profession.
It is no secret that nowadays, with rapid advances in mobile technologies, a large amount of data is being generated in every single second. The question is how much of these data actually help us to improve our products and ultimately reach our business goals? In my own personal experience at MindLA, I have been able to collect a massive amount of both numerical and textual user data through multiple data-gathering sessions from more than 1000 subjects in the past 8 months. The data gathering phase required plenty of monetary and human resources including trainings, pilot testing, planning, organizing, managing and running the sessions. Yet, all of these efforts would have meant nothing if we were not able to extract and analyze the strategic data we would need to determine our product direction based on our target population’s needs. Hence, by utilizing advanced analysis techniques we can learn what to focus on and where to invest our resources, which are critical questions to any business owner.
Through my experience in an app development process, I learned we would need to acquire advanced analytical techniques including predictive modeling and econometrics in order to succeed in the digital age. I found myself a perfect match for this career because:
· I gained a solid background in mathematics and statistical analyses through
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studying Electrical Engineering (EE) as my Bachelor’s degree. Our EE program was heavily invested in mathematical concepts and machine languages, hence I was able to develop a good understanding of mathematics, statistics, and programming in Matlab and C++.
· I have a practical knowledge of quantitative data analysis tools such as MATLAB, Python, R and Excel.
· I have a good understanding of management and finance as I studied Advanced Engineering and Management as my Master’s degree which is where I officially entered the world of business.
· I have been professionally trained to be a problem solver and a creative decision maker by consolidating my engineering skills with my business visions. In most cases I was able to solve a business problem by depending on my prior technical skills as an electrical engineer (e.g. MindLA, Danacore).
· I have been involved in the process of product development from the ideation phase to the implementation phase. Hence, I am familiar with the challenges that product managers encounter during the process.
· I am a good communicator and can translate business challenges into actionable solutions through research and analysis. Knowing the challenges of the product managers, I believe there is a significant need in the business realm for a medium or a person who can translate the results of data analyses into meaningful and doable business insights through storytelling and intuitive visualizations. I have been able
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to demonstrate my communication skills in the past few years where I utilized R visualization packages to visualize a large pool of data and present the results in a way that the stakeholders and product managers could empathize with the need.
