Colleen Fotsch won national swimming championships and was a pro athlete in both CrossFit and bobsledding. Now she's excelling at data analytics and engineering! Today, hear her fun, inspiring and practical story.
More on Colleen:
As a collegiate swimmer, she won national championships and set an American record in the relay.
As a pro CrossFit athlete, she twice competed at the “Games”, which is the highest echelon of the sport.
And then she simultaneously pursued a degree in data analytics while training with the US Bobsled team.
An injury ended her Olympic Bobsled team dream, but luckily she’d been pursuing that analytics career in parallel!
She began working full-time as a data analyst four years ago and has now grown into a data-engineering leadership role at a healthcare-staffing firm called CHG Healthcare in Utah, where she serves as Senior Technical Manager of their Data Platform.
Inspires her 280,000 Instagram followers on a daily basis.
Today’s episode essentially has two separate parts:
The first half focuses on Colleen’s exciting journey to the highest levels of three sports: swimming, CrossFit and bobsledding. That part should be fascinating to just about anyone.
The second half covers Colleen’s transition into data analytics and data engineering; that part will appeal to technically-minded listeners, particularly ones considering a career in or early on in a career in analytics or engineering.
In today’s episode, Colleen details:
The connection between a competitive sports mindset and data-career success.
Proven strategies for being hired into your first data role later in your career.
Why being "not smart enough" for coding was a mental block she had to overcome.
How analytics engineering bridges the gap between data engineering and analysis.
The huge benefits deskbound professionals can enjoy by including regular exercise in their week, and tips and tricks for developing or growing an exercise habit.
The SuperDataScience podcast is available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.