Where will you be living next year, and what will you be doing?
San Francisco, CA – Upon graduation I’ll continue my current path as the Founder & CEO of CrankChart. Our SaaS based platform leverages the combine powers of Conversational AI and Behavioral Sciences to nudge business decision makers and data professionals into better communication (and alignment) – with the goal of high impact decisions from analytics. With data driven decisions quickly becoming the sine qua non, the vision is to make high impact data driven decisions turnkey for enterprises of all scale.
We’re relocating from New York to San Francisco with the goal of expansion, in the quest for pole position.
What advice do you have for Harvard HES students, now that you have graduated?
My advice is to be clear on what you want. As a non-traditional educational path, clarity is your biggest asset. From my personal experience, having a clear objective really helped to shape the overall experience. More specifically, as an accomplished innovator I needed access to resources and great minds that only Harvard could deliver. Upon arriving to Cambridge, I was able to connect with amazing professors who were all too eager to help validate various hypotheses, goals etc. This provided the necessary motivation to start and complete the ALM in Software Engineering degree.
Harvard provides a broad range of resources and opportunities. But to access either, you will need to be proactive and excited about the prospects of getting as much as possible from the learning experience.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Harvard professors generally enjoy working with HES students. From their vantage point, we bring a wide range of experiences, open minds and a youthful eagerness to learn. Ride that wave!
In what ways has your Harvard Extension degree impacted your career?
The relationships made with various professors in SEAS have been highly instrumental in my professional success – as I’m often introduced to various experts, in (and outside) of academia, who are tackling the same or similar problems in industry. In addition, the hands on knowledge acquired in areas such as Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning etc. has better equipped me to make more effective decisions as a leader, board member or role player in various tech ventures.
