Ryan Harrington, ’18

Ryan Harrington’s inspiration to pursue an MS in Business Analytics came after working as a high school math teacher through Teach for America. As his school tried to process student data in order to make informed educational decisions, he found the process frustrating. “I felt that we could be doing much better for our students, but lacked the tools to do so,” says Harrington. “That pushed me to look for solutions, which ultimately led me to an MS in Business Analytics.”

After graduating from LeBow, Harrington took a position as a data scientist at CompassRed Data Labs, an analytics consulting firm. The job gives him the opportunity to work on a wide variety of analytics projects for a diverse set of customers. He was actually offered this job before graduation by CompassRed founder Patrick Callahan, who is also an alumnus of LeBow’s MS in Business Analytics program.

“Each project I work on is like a puzzle where we need to put together the pieces in order to help our clients achieve their business goals,” Harrington says. “I love the complexity of the projects and my ability to make an impact on our customers’ goals.”

Harrington says he has always believed that the best way to learn is by doing – to get one’s hands dirty and get to work. He says that nearly every course he took in the Business Analytics program featured one or more hands-on projects. “These projects helped to transform my understanding of the theory behind the concepts we discussed into a deep working knowledge.”

Asked about his favorite course, Harrington says, “There were many excellent courses during my time at LeBow, but one stood out in particular: Multivariate Methods with Professor Schneider. This course pushed me to understand how and why different predictive analytics techniques should be used. The concepts that we discussed there have been some of the most valuable as I’ve begun my career.”