I've been working now after an undergrad for about four years. I grew up in North Carolina and then went to college in New Hampshire where I played basketball with college. From there between my junior and senior year got an internship at Booz Allen Hamilton. It was in healthcare, IT implementation and system development stuff with off the shelf tools. Which a lot of the work that was kind of done in the federal space down there. I went back to school finished my senior year and then from there I went back to a full-time job with the same team. I think that's just kind of how my career started off. Which is something that I think a lot of people will either do or kind of freak out about those internships but it's good to get those. I think it's also good to keep an open mind that you don't necessarily need to go back to that same place because I went there worked there. The company was Booz Allen was there for two years. I had a great experience, I really liked the people I worked with that's why I went back. I realized that I wasn't in school for wanting to go into IT system development. I was a government or political science major in college. Once I kind of find a job where there was a more research kind of inquisitive, creative nature than I was getting at Booz Allen. So after two years working full time there, I went looking for new jobs, kind of using my network from people that have worked with at Booz Allen. The wife of my old project manager was working at Ipsos and I was looking to move to Chicago. She was like I know some people there. They don't have any openings now but it could be a good connection for you. I reached out to her but nothing came of it. Then six months later she reached and was like, Hey, we're actually looking for someone in our D. C. office maybe work here for a little bit, then we can find a way for you in Chicago. So that's how I ended up here. I've been here for two years now It's been awesome. Now my career is focused on still in the healthcare space between more research to patient experience research at the veteran affairs hospitals.

Weekly work hours functionally depends on what's going on. I'm sure a lot of people say it's pretty typical. I have 40 hours a week job. I would say it can definitely be more than that, depending on working in the federal space. There are busier times during others with proposals of business development activities that go on during the summer. As well as random times during the year. Managers and everyone that I've worked with here has been really flexible because everyone's kind of under the same understanding that there will be busy times. So when you're not busy, you can take some time for yourself within the company. Go after things there you want to research more or you want to go after it. That's what I really enjoyed about that research aspect here at Ipsos.

Personally I don't use a lot of software programs or do a lot of coding or data analysis or that part of the work. I'm on the advisory side. So I am more into change management or qualitative research. We work really close in tandem with people that do work a lot in SaaS, that do a lot of art and then we kind of work together to help have the data to tell a different story. I'd say the biggest part about this is if you are passionate about that path or you are passionate about that kind of the story of data vs the actual data itself, there are ways to work together without having to necessarily go back to school and get your masters in data science or something like that. I take classes on my own working on some things that you kind of talking the talk and be able to collaborate with those people versus actually doing that work yourself.