Choosing A Career in Data

“I chose the career working with data because it at the height of knowledge. Analytical processes transform data to become information and knowledge is created when you interpret information and give it context. I began my professional career as a resiliency analyst of the high voltage critical infrastructure grid and I enjoyed the analysis there to understand how electrical networks behave & use the results of that to predict and prevent overloads and outages before they happen. That’s very similar to what I do today in my current data security and privacy specialization, similar rewards for similar reasons of risk prevention. I help others through application and my special knowledge & skills, but now I prevent information disclosure, tampering, misuse, and alteration by determining where and how data networks and systems could be intruded or hacked and then I develop plans to plug those holes before they are compromised.”

Brian Huntley
4th Level Cybersecurity Associate, GovCIO

“Early in my career, before the explosion of big data in the commercial sector, I spent a dozen years with DOD customers to infer where things are and predict where they will be. The intelligence community called that data fusion back then. Now, for the past decade, I’ve developed systems to handle heavy volumes of claims related to healthcare & Veteran benefits, mainly for direct processing but also deeper offline analysis by specialists. Those two types of systems have a lot in common because of the volume of data streaming in and also the data that files up and accumulates. I didn’t chose data, but I guess it choose me.” 

Paul Short
Development Manager (Architect, Lead), GovCIO

“I like the discovery part. Going into a data swamp, if you will, or to a company that has disparate data needs and not understanding what they may have available to them. I enjoy diving in, making sense of what data is available, the quality of that data, and then doing what I can to bring that data to a state where the business can use it—not only for discovery of how they’re doing as a business, but also how they are measuring themselves and how they can improve. I enjoy the discovery and I enjoy the enlightenment of management with those discoveries.”

Greg Mayer
Senior Program Director, GovCIO

“I chose data starting out as a medical technologist. It was all about accuracy and data and how that made changes in people’s lives. Then I went on to information systems and learned more about the systems, software, servers and all the other different things that help us to contain all of our data. I then moved on to performance improvement, and again using the data to build different changes through companies and give them more insight so they could see things, make changes and monitor them. It’s always been something I’ve just been very obsessed with. I love that we can actually have data that’s not skewed that can change the world.”

Elsa Reed
Project Manager, GovCIO