A brief introduction: Hello everyone! My name is Jeff, and I am a Senior Business Process Architect at C Space, a global customer agency. I have been incredibly fortunate to have found myself in roles that have rewarded being curious, whether they were in financial education, FinTech, or in professional services.

Why did I take up the FDP challenge? A lot of my day-to-day involves partnering with stakeholders across finance, operations, growth, and account management teams to improve processes around their data. Over the past twelve months, I had found myself partnering further with data science teams. My graduate work primarily focused on optimization modeling, Monte Carlo simulation, and data governance/warehousing, so I found a widening gap in my understanding of burgeoning modeling concepts. Around the same time, I was introduced to the FDP curriculum material by a former colleague. What excited me was the idea of advising on data architecture in a way that supported data science teams and limited the amount of exhaustive transformation that is sometimes needed. Additionally, many business systems are now incorporating modeling tools natively into their infrastructure, so the possibility to be able to conduct my own lighter level techniques was also quite exciting.

What is great about FDP: There are so many foundational concepts from FDP that I found readily applicable to my day-to-day work. From more foundational to intermediate concepts, I was able to have more advanced conversations with our data science team. In a recent modeling project, I was able to explain the need for more variable transformation to our stakeholders in a way that made sense statistically and for the business. Additionally, some of the concepts from the material surrounding data ethics and modeling have stayed with me as I begin to consider more and more processes around data capture & instrumentation. Coming off the heels of completing the program, I feel much more confident as I look to improve my R & Python understanding.

My advice for aspiring industry professionals: Many individuals hold traditional learning and hands-on experience as two separate concepts, when you are fully capable of completing both simultaneously. Being able to bring practical experience to a classroom and academic concepts into your workplace is challenging but I have found the results to be more evident than focusing on one siloed concept. Additionally, I’d suggest spending time focusing on small, incremental improvements consistently (whether this is programming or softer skills) through daily or weekly practice, as opposed to only trying to make violent swings in one direction in 2-3 weeks.

About Jeff Mitchell

Jeff is a Senior Business Process Architect at C Space. He received his BA in English and BBA in Marketing from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and holds a Master of Science in Business Analytics from the Kelley School of Business. Since 2021, Jeff is also a Financial Data Professional, a charter conferred by the FDP Institute (established by the CAIA Association). Jeff has completed various international work and study opportunities that have brought him to Havana, Chennai, and Oxford University. Lastly, Jeff holds multiple certifications in the Salesforce ecosystem.