I’ve achieved Skills Badges in BigQuery, Data Analysis, and more. I’ve also achieved Google’s Professional Data Engineer Certification, and have been a Google Developer Expert since 2012.
Most recently, I was named one of few Data Analysis Innovator Champions within the Google Cloud Innovators Program, which I’m particularly excited about because I’ve heard it’s a coveted spot for data practitioners and necessitates a Googler nomination to move from the Innovator membership to Champion title!
You’re undoubtedly a data analytics thought leader in the community. When did you know you moved from data student to data master and what data project are you most excited about?
I knew I had graduated, if you will, to the data architect realm once I was able to confidently do data work that matters, even if that work was outside of my usual domains: adTech and finTech..
For example, my work over the past few years has been around human health outcomes, including combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. I do this by supporting scientists and bioinformatic researchers with genomic-scale data pipelines. Did I know anything about genomics before I started? Not at all! I self-studied bioinformatics and recorded my learnings on GitHub. Along the way I adopted my learnings into an open source GCP course on GitHub aimed at researchers who are new to working with GCP. What’s cool about the course is that I begin from the true basics of how to set up a GCP account. Then I gradually work up to mapping out genomic-scale data workflows, pipelines, analyses, batch jobs, and more using BigQuery and a host of other Google Cloud data products.
Now, I’ve received feedback that this repository has made a positive impact on researchers’ ability to process and synthesize enormous amounts of data quickly. Plus, it achieves the greater goal of broadening accessibility to a public cloud like GCP.
In what ways do you think you uniquely bring value back to the data community? Why is it important to you to give back to the data community?
I stay busy always sharing my learnings back to the community. I record Cloud and Big data technical screencasts (demos) on Youtube, I’ve authored 25 data and cloud courses on LinkedIn Learning, and I occasionally write Medium articles on cloud technology and random thoughts I have about everyday life. I’m also the cofounder of Teaching Kids Programming, with a mission to help equip middle and high school teachers with a great programming curriculum on Java.