“I Volunteer with Delta because I value giving back to the community, and doing it alongside people with similar interests. Through volunteering with Delta on its data science projects, I can have a bigger impact by leveraging my existing skills, and improve my professional skills for work. It’s also fun doing something related to your career with people you value as friends, all of which allows me to build up my professional network.

I have worked mostly in the for-profit sector, usually in settings where the success metrics are pretty clear right from the start. When working with Delta's clients, there is less clarity about what the end result should be. The questions are more subjective, which leads to a lot of questions: How should we define key variables and metrics? What graphs will best reflect the data? It was definitely a lot of fun meeting a group of people who I wouldn’t meet through work, and partnering with Delta's clients to make an impact.”
Steven Troxler, Data Scientist at Stitch Fix, Delta Analytics 2016 Fellow




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"We really felt the impact we made while working with Transforming Education. Through analyzing data, we managed to give insights that they didn’t initially have. And those insights could be acted upon to improve programs and affect the communities that they are already serving.
During my internship with the City of Berkeley over summer before my senior year, I wrote, distributed, and analyzed a city-wide survey to measure support for a potential sugar sweet beverage tax. The findings were that most people in Berkeley would have been in support of the policy, and the city council member and I approached the Berkeley City Council with these findings and put together a campaign for the ballot. In November of 2014, the ballot passed with 75% approval, and Berkeley became the first city in the nation to pass a tax on sugar sweetened beverages. It was very humbling to be a part of something that makes a difference in people’s lives. Without the data supporting our argument, we wouldn’t have been able to win against the deep pockets of major soda companies such as Coca Cola, which spent upwards of $4 billion that year against our campaign. It really showed me that data can move things, that it can empower people and point people in the right direction and push things that you might initially think are impossible to achieve. I thought that fiddling with numbers was perhaps just a hobby before, but after that I realized that the data I worked on could change people’s lives and save children from obesity. It was a turning point for me.”
Anna Elizabeth Shen, Senior Account Manager at 3Q Digital, Delta Analytics 2016 Fellow.

To apply for 2017 Fellowship, please visit http://www.deltanalytics.org/2017-fellowship.html

Takeo Hiraki is an analyst at Charles River Associates. He is currently working on a project with Roots of Success, an environmental literacy and green job training curriculum-development non-profit.


1. Why did you choose to volunteer with Delta?
I've been interested in education and nonprofits ever since I served a term as VP of student government at my previous college. Throughout the strategic planning and budgeting process, I felt we had a wealth of information, but a dearth of meaningful insight into how this data should inform our decisions. I decided to join Delta Analytics because I think we provide a unique opportunity to help resource-strapped organizations make sense of the information that will be the key to their success.

2. What project are you currently working on with Delta?
I'm currently working with Jonathan and Asim on an education nonprofit called Roots of Success. We're using their performance and demographic information to visualize their data and assess the impact of their organization.

3. What is the coolest thing you have done with data?
I worked with a Berkeley professor to analyze data about how and when employees prefer to receive feedback from managers. It intuitively makes sense that most people want neither to be micromanaged, nor given too little direction; our research sought to find the sweet spot in between.

4. Favorite publicly available data set and why?
I'm a big fan of the OECD's data on business indicators, global aid, and education http://www.oecd.org/statistics/. There also used to be a site called Statfinder run by the UC Office of the President; unfortunately it got taken down.

5. What music are you currently listening to?
I have an eclectic taste in music: Hozier, Bastille, Calvin Harris, AWOLNATION, the Beatles.

6. What was the last vacation you took?
The last "vacation" I took was studying abroad in London. While in Europe, I traveled to Switzerland, Spain, and France on weekends, as well as attended EDC and other events in the UK. I met some interesting and amazing people while abroad.

7. Big plans for the next year?
My current plan is to study for the GMAT and take my first trip to Asia near the end of the year.