2015 Travel by the Numbers

Happy New Years! Looking back on this past year, 2015 was another big year in travel. Once again, I’ve taken a look back at my 2015 travel numbers and with the help of TripIt have pulled together the stats to paint a story of my year. If you missed last years, you can see my 2014 Travel by the Numbers recap here. So the 2015 snapshot: Total miles flown: 104,740 miles via 62 flights flown through 34 airports on 11 different airlines visiting 7 different countries (outside of the airport). 4 of those 7 countries were net new for me, increasing my total number of countries visited to 47. Of that, I’d estimate that 70% was for business, 30% for pleasure – blurry due to a mix of both on some trips (but a slightly
Continue reading...

Podcast Guest: Jumpstart with Jeffalytics

A few weeks ago I had the chance to sit down (virtually) with an industry friend, Jeff Sauer, who is an expert in all things Google Analytics & AdWords and who has recently kicked off a podcast series he’s calling ‘Jumpstart with Jeffalytics’. I had the distinct honor of being guest #2 (after the Wizard of Moz, Rand Fishkin) for Jeff’s new podcast and now that it’s live I wanted to share Jeff’s recap of the episode as well as a link to where you can find the podcast. I had a great time chatting with Jeff and recording this session, and am humbled by his kind words of support throughout. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the support and friendship of industry peers such as Jeff and
Continue reading...

I’m a Woman in Tech: How it Helps Me and Hurts my Gender

I’m an analytics professional. A teacher. An advocate. An advisor. I work in tech. I work with engineers, developers, marketers, sales, product, and ops. I work with all levels, from analysts to executives. And I am a woman. Until recently, I’ve hadn’t put much thought into what that really meant for me professionally. I attribute that to a couple of reasons: I’ve (almost) always had managers who have treated me with respect and pushed me, advocated for me, and promoted me based on the quality of work and the contribution to the business I’ve delivered. Not based on my gender. And also because I’ve never seen myself as a feminist (I’m not saying this is good or bad or that being a feminist would require me to think about what it
Continue reading...

Digital Analytics is all About Context – Lessons from #TheDress

Over the past couple of weeks I have presented at a few conferences (SummitUp in Dayton, Ohio and UnSummit in Salt Lake City, Utah) on the topic of People, Process, and Platform. Now, before you roll your eyes because you’ve heard it all before, let me let you know that you won’t be getting my whole speech in this blog post. In fact, you won’t be getting any of the core parts. Instead, I want to remind you of the importance of the people you have looking at, analyzing, interpreting, and telling stories about your data, as I did to the audiences at these conferences. Most of you will have seen #TheDress, #DressGate, #WhiteAndGold, or #BlueAndBlack over the past couple of weeks. For those of you who haven’t, let me
Continue reading...

Business vs Marketing Analyst – Roles, Skillsets & Career Paths

I was recently chatting with a young women who happens to be a senior at Chapman University in Southern California and is an aspiring analyst. She mentioned she had just been to New York for a school trip where she had learned a lot about financial analytics, and she asked me my thoughts on financial analytics vs web analytics. Were they two different things? Were the skills transferrable? What were the main differences? After chatting with her about this for a good 15 minutes I thought it would useful write it all down in a blog post to share more broadly. What are the main differences between a Business Analyst and a Marketing Analyst? A business analyst is generally someone who sits in a business operations, finance, or marketing operations
Continue reading...

I’m Joining the Google Analytics Team to Advocate for Digital Analytics Best Practices

After working as a practitioner of analytics and optimization for the past six years (at Adobe, the Apollo Group, and most recently Google), I’m excited to announce that I’m ‘officially’ making the move to the vendor side of the house! I’m joining the Google Analytics team as a ‘Best Practice Advocate’ for analytics and optimization. Five years ago, I would have said this role was my dream job. Two years ago, when I joined Google, I still would have said that this role was my dream job. And today, now 5 days in, I’m happy to say I’ve actually landed my dream job! 🙂 I say ‘officially’ with quotes for two main reasons: 1. I’ve already been at Google for two years, many might think that I’ve been on the
Continue reading...

Google: 6 Months In – What I’ve Learned

I received an email the other week congratulating me for moving out of my Noogler (new Googler) faze, which I guess is defined as your first 6 months at Google. It’s hard to believe I’ve already been here for 6 months. So what have I learned? A lot! 1). I’m surrounded by a lot of really smart people which constantly pushes me to try harder and work smarter It’s not that I haven’t worked with a lot of smart people before. I definitely have. But it’s really a whole new level which is both exciting and scary. I’m constantly aware that I’m not the smartest (or second, or third) in the room. It’s a challenge every day to keep up (and I’m loving the challenge). 2). Likely a consequence (more
Continue reading...