Alter Everything

MaddieJ · ‎10-11-2021

Following the audio journals of three Alteryx interns, they share how they've taken advantage of the learning opportunity to pivot, shape their career paths, form connections, and truly examine what they want professionally.

Panelists

Leanna Jewart - @LeannaJ, LinkedIn
Liza Kliminsky - LinkedIn
George Williams V - LinkedIn
Maddie Johannsen - @MaddieJ, LinkedIn, Twitter

Topics

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Transcript

Episode Transcription

LEANNA: 00:00	Three and a half years ago, I lost my job. And I was crushed. I was really discouraged. I didn't know what I was going to do. I considered just finding another full-time job similar to what I was already doing and trying to continue. And then I thought, "Well, this could be an opportunity for me to go back to school." And I thought about getting an associates in business management or something just to get that degree. And my mom actually prompted the question of, "What do you really want to do with your life?" And I'm so glad she did because I started thinking about what I really wanted to do. I wanted to do something with problem-solving, something with investigating. When I worked at the bank, I kind of liked risk management and that sort of thing. And so I wasn't sure where I would go from there. I feel like my experience here at Alteryx has been unique because I am not a traditional student. I'm not a traditional intern. I didn't get here on what some people might call a normal path. And I hope that my story is proof that you can change careers. You can have curveballs come and still come out on top. And that if you put in the hard work and the effort and most importantly, have the support of a great group of people around you, that you can achieve whatever it is that you want to do.
MADDIE: 01:23	[music] Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data science and analytics culture. I'm Maddie Johannsen. And today, we're going to hear some inspiration from the 2021 interns at Alteryx. You just heard from one of them, Leanna Jewart, who in this episode is joined by two other interns, Liza Kliminsky and George Williams V. They documented their experience through their internship, and this episode will feature clips from those audio journals. Whether you're a student, a career changer, a mentor, a people leader, or just someone looking for a bit of inspiration, keep listening. This episode is packed with insight into the Alteryx intern program itself, but it's also full of general life and learning advice that will leave you feeling excited for your next challenge. Let's meet the interns.
LEANNA: 02:13	Hi, my name is Leanna Jewart. I'm from West Sunbury, Pennsylvania. I'm an information security intern at Alteryx. I have a husband, three kids, four cats, and a dog. I love to ride bikes and play video games and spend time with my family. I'm currently a senior at Slippery Rock University here in Pennsylvania. I'm studying cybersecurity with a concentration in security governance. I also have an associates degree from Butler County Community College in computer forensics and security. I previously worked in the banking and financial services industry. Three and a half years ago, I decided to make a career change and make the switch into cybersecurity.
LIZA: 03:01	Hello, my name is Liza Kliminsky. I am working as a sales operations intern this summer on the sales systems and data team. I'm originally from Aurora, Colorado, a large suburb of Denver, but I'm actually a first-generation American as my entire family is originally from Russia. So I got to grow up with two beautiful cultures in my life. I currently attend school up in Boulder, Colorado at CU Boulder, where I am a business student with a dual emphasis in business analytics and marketing as well as a certificate in operations and information management. At school, I'm involved with TAMID Group, a consulting student organization that works with Israeli tech start-ups. And starting this next semester, I have the incredible opportunity to act as a co-president with LAIS, the Leeds Association for Information Systems. Outside of school, I love seeing live music. I mostly attend a bunch of EDM shows, since Denver is the hub for all things related to EDM. I also love camping, traveling, and exploring anywhere I can. I definitely try to take advantage of all of the fantastic outdoorsy activities that we have here in Colorado.
GEORGE: 04:11	My name is George Lloyd Williams V. I am a data science intern. Prior to Alteryx, I've had four technology-related internships, three of which were in the data science/machine learning space. I've taken a longer time to finish undergrad than most of my peers, but there are some processing in college longer than I anticipated. Fun facts about me are that I am an avid metalcore or post-hardcore fan. And if you're not sure what those are, you can just refer to me as a metalhead. I used to enjoy playing video games in my free time, but nowadays I spend my time in the gym or watching self-help motivation or programming videos on YouTube. And I occasionally watch some anime or a Netflix show when I'm winding down to go to sleep.
MADDIE: 04:57	Leanna, Liza, and George, all had different motivations for seeking out an internship. And I think this is an important part of the story because they're also relatable, and they give a few pointers for how they searched for internships and ultimately landed in the Alteryx internship program. Here's Leanna.
LEANNA: 05:13	When it came time to start looking for an internship role, I knew that I wanted something that would give me the most experience in the area I was studying, which is security governance. And through the application process, I found that searching for cybersecurity internships was really a challenge because the opportunities ranged from software development to risk and compliance and everywhere in between. So it was really important that I found a company that would give me the best experience and support my future goals. And when I came across the position for Alteryx, I honestly had never heard of Alteryx before, but I started doing the research and saw a lot of interesting things about their growth and the things that they have been doing. And I found it really interesting. After my first interview with Alteryx, I was even more excited to hear about this role because it was exactly what I was looking for. It was a role in security governance, which was so difficult to find. And then hearing about the plans for the internship and the company culture and all the things that I would get to experience, I knew that I had found the right position.
GEORGE: 06:34	My prior experience in the machine learning, data science space made me want to continue going down that path as I had found the work very meaningful and relevant at my previous internships. The data science field is my number one preference when searching for a position or narrowing down options. So it was a relatively easy choice to make on whether I should apply or not. Alteryx has shattered all expectations I had when coming to work at a tech company. Everyone I've talked to tells me the same narrative concerning company culture, which is, in a nutshell, that they love it. The work-life balance is excellent. People wholeheartedly enjoy what they're working on. And then if you feel overwhelmed, you should communicate your feelings to someone. There have been zero red or even yellow flags, and there have only been pleasant surprises like finding out the interns are going on the Next-Leaders retreat in California.
LIZA: 07:23	I was required to take a business analytics class for my degree through CU. And the class was based around learning Alteryx Designer. My professors were actually two Alteryx partners that have their own data consulting firm, and they were by far my most favorite professors throughout my entire college career. I fell in love with using Designer and thought it was the most fun tool I'd ever used. And I also loved the people that were directly associated with the company. And I found myself really longing myself to work there. My previous experience was heavily tilted in the marketing world within the music industry. And I really wanted to get into the tech space. Alteryx very quickly became my dream company to work for. I actually applied to every single internship job opening on the career site to better my chances of being selected for something. I was originally selected to interview for a sales internship, but that didn't really align with my career goals. So I was able to discuss this predicament with the recruiter and was able to project my passion for the company's mission and product and actually ended up getting an interview for my current position with the sales operations team. Alteryx has by far exceeded any expectations that I had by a million miles. The biggest surprise that I've had was that every single person I've spoken to at the company feels like a friend.
GEORGE: 08:44	Being selected for an internship or really any position in general that you want can be summed up in two words; straight joy. I'm sure everyone who applies to jobs know how much of a literal grind it can be. And honestly, not having the daily ritual of searching for positions and filling out technical applications and doing technical assessments or projects takes a large weight off a person's shoulders. I texted all of my friends and told them I got one of the gigs of a lifetime because I've been looking for jobs and internships pre-pandemic. My parents were elated for a few days, but then I got lots of, let's say, advice on how I need to do well. I'm hoping to gain confidence as a developer. I believe that imposter syndrome is very prevalent in the tech industry. And as a very logical thinking student, it is easy to compare yourself with [still?] projects and no years of experience to devs that have many industry projects completed and years of experience. Fortunately for me, I have been surrounded by great full-time employees that see my potential and cannot wait to see what things I build.
LIZA: 09:54	When I was selected for the internship, it felt so surreal. I remember getting the call, getting an offer, and immediately running to my roommate. And we both kind of jumped around the room with excitement for a little while. After almost 400 job applications, being selected to work at my top choice felt like a real dream come true. When I was starting, my goals were oriented around mostly just learning as much as I could. I wanted to build my personal and professional development through networking, impactful projects, and overall gaining valuable experience.
LEANNA: 10:28	When I found out that I was offered the position, I was so thrilled. I went through the process of signing my offer agreement and all of the steps that they needed me to complete, pretty much the same day. I was so excited. I just really wanted to get in there and get hands on. I also wanted to have the ability to interact and network with other professionals to get feedback, because that is essential to really understanding the industry, the positions. And everyone has a unique story and a journey that tells how they got to where they are. And it's not a clear-cut guide for me, but it does help me understand that I am in control of my story, and I love to be inspired by others.
MADDIE: 11:22	Here's George sharing what he learned about data drift as a data science intern.
GEORGE: 11:27	So what is data drift? Data drift is a change in the distribution of data contained in the train and test file. And there are three types of data drift. There is covariate shift, prior probability shift, and concept drift. My team was directed to focus on covariate shift, as this refers to the change in the distribution of independent variables present in the training data and the test data. So for example, if you have a training dataset with a column of incomes from a decade ago, but your test data's column of incomes is from this decade, naturally, the distribution has shifted. In this case, covariate shift will focus on a specific feature, and that will be the income. It is important to ensure that the data is consistent across time. Models can be trained and deployed, but may deteriorate depending on new data being sent through it. For example, a model can perform extremely well in 2019 and present great results, but little by little, the model's accuracy can deteriorate in the long term, which can lead to many problems and issues. Ideally, you want your training data to be a good representation of datasets you input to get accurate predictions. To avoid these issues, it's very important to take timely action once a data shift occurs.
MADDIE: 12:47	Let's hear from Liza, who worked on the sales operations team.
LIZA: 12:51	Many of my projects have been centered around making business processes more efficient, which is ultimately what any operations team does. Almost all of my optimization was done within Alteryx Designer. My first project of the internship was [account?] team members, where I built a workflow that automatically updates team member roles in Salesforce. Next, I had new hiring notifications, a workflow that notifies the sales operations team of new hires for the upcoming week. This might've been one of my favorite projects because I could see it working weekly and see my direct impact on the team every Monday, when the email sent out. I've also received a couple of workflows from analysts on my team, and I was asked to consolidate them to make them run more efficiently.
LEANNA: 13:37	One of the biggest things I've learned about working in security governance is that the job is always changing. So when I started this internship, the expectation of the intern project has really shifted. It has been a great experience because I have had the opportunity to-- instead of focus on one singular project, I've been able to see many different areas of security governance. I've worked with policies and control mapping. I've worked with business continuity and business impact analysis. I got to spend a lot of time using Alteryx Designer and kind of honing those skills and utilizing those to produce the metrics. I worked on phishing campaigns. And I've also created metrics surrounding that as well. So my intern project has really changed, but it has allowed me to have a more broad experience than what I initially expected.
LEANNA: 14:35	When I started this internship, I had no intention of setting out to learn Alteryx Designer software. I knew that it was something that I needed to get familiar with, but I never imagined that I'd be using it as much as I have been over the last 12 weeks. I took it upon myself to begin going through the learning path to get familiar with Alteryx Designer. And then the part of my project was involving some data and creating metrics. And typically I would use Excel. And that's what I was familiar with, and that was kind of my go-to. But some of the people that work for Alteryx really encouraged me to use Designer and to see the benefits. And I have been able to create some insane workflows that I am so proud of. And I've learned so much, and I've been able to produce valuable data to my team. And I feel like it's been such an important part of the work that I've done here. And I am so happy that I put the time in to learn the product.
S5: 15:47	[music] Hey, everyone. This is Dan Menke. I'm the manager of community operations at Alteryx. Fun fact about me, I'm a huge Formula One racing enthusiast. Actually enthusiast may be an understatement as I eat and breathe Formula One racing. The sport encompasses so much of what interests me, from the cars to the technology, the drivers, the track configurations, and of course, how they use analytics to enhance the performance of the car and drivers. So when Alteryx announced our partnership with McLaren Racing, needless to say, I was slightly stoked. And I'm excited to invite you all to attend our Alter.NEXT event, "Accelerate your analytics," featuring McLaren Formula One Racing Team CEO, Zak Brown and celebrity guest speaker Mindy Kaling on October 26th in the Americas, October 28th in A-PAC, and November 4th in EMEA. You'll get to hear transformation stories powered by Alteryx and get inspired for your next analytic breakthrough. Plus, it's free. To register, check out the link on our show notes page at community.alteryx.com/podcast. See you there.
MADDIE: 17:09	[music] So the interns worked on these insightful projects and got some awesome hands-on experience in the fields they want careers in. But things got even better with a trip to Alteryx headquarters in Irvine, California.
GEORGE: 17:21	So we found out really early on that we were going to be going to HQ and meeting all the interns and the early-in-career team and some executives in person. And I remember being on this call with my video on and some other people had their video on. But when we got this news, everyone's reaction was just universal. And it was just jaw dropping to the floor, "Oh my God, we're going to California. We're going to go see HQ and meet everyone."
LEANNA: 17:49	I am here in California. I'm getting ready to meet up with the rest of the interns to head over to the new office in Irvine.
LIZA: 17:58	When I first landed in SoCal, my Uber driver picked me up to take me to our hotel, I had instantly fallen in love with the area as soon as we drove out of the airport. The palm trees and beautiful weather made me even more excited to connect with everyone.
GEORGE: 18:12	Arriving at HQ, we were greeted with camera crews and drones and all the execs giving us applause. It was interesting to be treated like celebrities. I like that a little bit, maybe a bit too much. Well, I'm not sure. We'll check back on that later. But we toured the Irvine office. And it's an amazing campus. The gym was a little small, but the scenery and ambiance of the office was just beautiful.
MADDIE: 18:38	While in California, the interns participated in a learn-a-thon called Solving It Forward.
LIZA: 18:43	We were split into eight individual teams working on four different projects. Each team was partnered with a nonprofit organization that had a business problem that needed to be solved. My team had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with Integrate Health, a nonprofit focused on providing quality and accessible healthcare to people in Togo, Africa. We worked on this project for about a week and a half. The business problem that we needed to solve for was based around finding outliers within the nonprofits data and building strategies as to how we can drive overall efficiency and effectiveness of the org. My team, The Data Dogs, actually ended up winning the award for best data and insights among all eight teams, and that was a really cool feeling to have.
GEORGE: 19:27	We were able to showcase all our hard work from the week prior [to?] various nonprofits. And it gave me a lot of satisfaction to know that all the nonprofits gained meaningful results to take back to their organizations.
LEANNA: 19:39	And then we also had an opportunity to give back to the community by making blankets for the nonprofit group called YANA.
LIZA: 19:47	YANA, You Are Not Alone. And they provide care packages for people going through cancer treatment. I truly appreciated the extent to which Alteryx went to find organizations that are impactful and give us the opportunity to make a difference.
MADDIE: 20:01	There were also fun team-bonding activities. Here's Liza.
LIZA: 20:05	We were split into teams of four, and were given the task to build a McLaren F1 car using some axles and wheels that had been provided. The rest was up to us. We had two to three hours to find materials, build the car, and return to the office for the final competition. My team and I ended up going to target to build our car. Our plan of action was to find an existing toy car, swap out the axles and wheels for the ones provided. After all, if it was a real toy car, it would work well, right? At least we hoped so. After finding a toy that fit our requirements, we went to one of our team member's houses to build it. When our car looked spick and span, we returned to the office and it was time for the moment of truth. We all walked over to a small hill and released our cars. My team was definitely a little disappointed as our car didn't move. A big part of our F1 car was the beautiful launching system that we built for it. But we were only allowed to use this mechanism for one of the trials, but at least it moved with the system. After our trials, we had team presentations about our car, our story, and how we created it. Then we went to a restaurant for food and drinks and waited for the winners of the bonding event to be announced. Tragically, my team ended up in last place, but we couldn't complain because the other teams really impressed with their innovative F1 building skills. The day was packed full of excitement, and it was so great to be able to make more personal connections rather than over a screen. The entire team has so many incredible people, and I was touched that I was able to participate in such a fun event with them.
GEORGE: 21:40	Throughout the summer, we also had intern trivia games and a tie-dye event. And these also served as a nice break in the day, assuming I was able to have the time to get my things done and attend them. There were zero stress, fun activities where we got to compete in games and attain bragging rights for winning. And overall they served as a good way to form closer connections to our intern class. And I would highly recommend attending all of these events if you're an incoming intern because like I said, they're fun and you get to meet-- you get to get closer to your co-workers.
LEANNA: 22:14	Now that we've been able to meet face to face, I've been getting to know the other interns on a whole different level and watching all the other interns interact and spend time together and make long-lasting friendships. It was just so great to be able to finally add this piece to our experience and meet everybody face to face. The early-in-careers team has done such an amazing job at providing the interns with a well-rounded experience. And this Next-Leaders retreat has just been the absolute icing on the cake of a tremendous internship experience. The amount of effort and thought and time that they've put into every single detail of making this a phenomenal experience and exposing us to all different types of opportunities is just incredible. I am so thankful to the whole early-in-careers team for all the work that they've done and time and attention that they have given all of the interns.
LIZA: 23:19	The biggest key takeaway that I'm walking away from this summer with is that I now know I want to stay in the data-tech world. The intellect, the speed, and the talent that the company showed me exists in the world was nothing short of inspiring. I value the people that I was exposed to this summer. The talent at Alteryx is one of a kind, and to have been able to be part of it as an intern during my college career made me feel so excited to start my professional one. From everyone I spoke to this summer and the projects that I worked on, one thing was very evident. You should be passionate about your work and feel fulfilled by it. Another obvious lesson that was re-solidified in my head is that you should never stop upskilling yourself and always keep pushing yourself to be better. I loved seeing and truly feeling the ambition and drive of other team members. Overall, the biggest takeaways from this experience is that you should love what you do and never stop working towards your dreams.
GEORGE: 24:12	So the key takeaways from the internship, I've a bunch of written down. So I'm just going to go into them. And then if I have more to say, I'm just going to say what I feel is applicable here. So starting off, you should take your work seriously with the caveat that you should expect it to have problems. And what I mean by that is, I really believe that you should be a try hard and that everything you touch should be gold when you hit it off, but then you get feedback on it and there's a bunch of problems, things aren't as great as they should be. And you go back and you revise it, and then you make sure it's gold once again and then you hand it back off. I think that this really enhances your learning capabilities because you need to absorb everything that your superiors or the people who are better than you in your field are telling you to do so that you can eventually get to where they are one day, right? And if you don't take your work seriously, you're not going to really care or be in the correct mindset to foster a growth mentality. So with that being said, we're going to move on to point two, which is, people at Alteryx are very much willing to help you. And that is mostly due to the company culture. But on an individual level, they want to help you because they were in similar situations to you in the past. And if you join a company like Alteryx who fosters the growth mindset and being a better human and contributing to a cause that's greater than yourself, then people are naturally going to adhere to this and want to help you and want to watch you grow and succeed. And so if you don't know something, it's better to ask earlier than to ask later. And your mentor or manager will tell you if you need to worry about the specific feature or the specific problem now or not.
GEORGE: 26:08	If you're having problems, communicate them early. Coding problems, I would wait between 20 minutes to an hour for myself trying to solve it. And if I was still stuck at that time, I would be asked to talk to my manager. My manager literally is like, "If you're stuck 20 minutes, max an hour on a problem, you need to come to me, and we need to get it resolved." And I think that's really great because I'm the kind of person that is very prideful and I want to figure things out on my own, but that's not really conducive to development on a strict timeline, right? And then for my final point, I just want to say that in a lot of cases, soft skills go farther than technical skills. Technical skills, however, extremely important. You absolutely need them, right? You have to know how to do things for your job. However, if you know how to communicate effectively and you know how to be polite and respectful of other people's time, then people are going to naturally want to be around you. They're going to want to work with you. They're going to include you. You're going to find out a lot of information. And there's not a whole lot of things you can do on the technical side to get people to like you other than being a master of your craft, I suppose. But I'm an entry-level guy. I don't have years of experience. There's no way I can be a master of my craft. So what do I need to do? Well, I need to be polite to the people who know more than me, and I need to absorb all the advice that they give me along my journey.
LEANNA: 27:51	The biggest thing I've learned over this whole transition in my life is that no one can do it for you. You have to do it yourself, but you need the people to support you. And that is really important to understand. I would not be where I am today without my champions and my cheerleaders and the people that picked me up whenever I was feeling down. And there were times that I had to pick myself up, but having the other people around me that cared about me and helped me take care of myself and accomplish the things that I needed to do, was essential to getting me where I am. One of my favorite parts about this whole program was the Intern Buddy program. It was really surprising. I didn't expect it. I wasn't even sure what it would entail. But having a person that is not part of my team, but is a part of Alteryx. So they understand the culture. They cared about my journey. They cared about what was going on. And I could really share anything, any thoughts, feelings, and they would check in with me at least once a week to see how things were going. And there was more than a handful of times that those emails and those chats happened at the exact time that I just needed that little bit of pick me up. This all kind of goes to my advice of having a good support system and taking it anywhere that you can get it because all the encouragement and all the support that you can get really makes a world of a difference.
LIZA: 29:31	As a student who entered college and is walking out having changed their major three times, I knew that when I found data and analytics that that was exactly what I wanted to do. It felt perfect for me. However, having switched majors a few times and years of feeling lost, it felt difficult to grasp how to remain competitive among students and candidates that were doing what I just fell in love with for years. This sales ops internship was my first, even remotely technical role. All of my professional experience before was based within marketing, mostly within the music industry. And after beginning my classes, learning Python, SQL, and Designer, I knew very fast that I wanted to pivot into the analytics world. The biggest thing with data and analytics is practice. I would complete my class assignments and projects and focused on truly understanding the concepts and methods that I was using so I could easily talk about them and explain them to other people. I think the best thing to do when trying to figure out what you want to do career wise is research and reaching out to different people. LinkedIn is such a helpful tool to connect with people professionally. And it's very helpful to see what people are actually doing.
GEORGE: 30:38	Data science is a very broad field. And in a nutshell, I would say that if you're not a programmer and you enjoy deriving interesting information from data using analytical techniques, then data science is probably the path one would want to take. On the flip side, if you are someone who enjoy solving complex technical problems and building something from the ground up using software and critical thinking, then the engineering route is the path I would recommend. Both paths are rewarding. But for me personally, there's a certain satisfaction from creating something from nothing. General advice I would give to people pondering the two would be to either for data analytics, find some data and figure out what analytics you can derive from it and really pay attention to how you feel throughout that whole process. And then on the engineering side, build literally anything you think would be cool and then show off that creation to other individuals. A lot of engineers find side projects extremely enjoyable, and they love talking about them. And additionally, it is an easy way to connect with people in the industry.
LEANNA: 31:47	There are so many things I'm going to be taking away from this internship experience. The exposure to the role has been incredible. I've gotten a really great view at what security governance, risk and compliance looks like. And that was something that I was really looking forward to. Whenever I started the internship, I wanted to see what it was really like. And I feel like I got a pretty well-rounded experience in that respect. Something else I learned is how important it is to me that I work for a company that values me. The amount of time and effort that Alteryx has put into me as an intern really shows how much they value their employees and not just for the work that they do, but in developing their career and their future and helping them achieve their goals. And that is something that's very important to me. And I didn't realize how possible it was for an organization to care about me that much. The EIC team had put together so many different events. And I participated in so many things that I've gotten to learn about the company, develop skills, just learn way more than I even expected. So I'm able to take away a lot more than I really initially expected, and I'm so thankful for it.
LEANNA: 33:06	When I was 18 years old, I had no desire to go to college. I was really focused on just doing whatever I wanted to do. And my parents said that if I didn't go to college, I had to get a full-time job. And so that's what I did. I got pretty lucky and I started working at a bank. And that was kind of the start of a relatively sustainable career. I worked really hard and worked my way up through assistant manager, branch manager. I eventually worked to get my next job. And it was enough. It was enough to sustain my family. I always said that I would eventually go back to college. I would like to get a degree whenever the time was right. It just never seemed feasible or that I would have enough time. Three and a half years ago, I lost my job. And I was crushed. I was really discouraged. I didn't know what I was going to do. I considered just finding another full-time job similar to what I was already doing and trying to continue. And then I thought, "Well, this could be an opportunity for me to go back to school." And I thought about getting an associates in business management or something just to get that degree. And my mom actually prompted the question of, "What do you really want to do with your life?" And I'm so glad she did because I started thinking about what I really wanted to do. I wanted to do something with problem-solving, something with investigating. When I worked at the bank, I kind of liked risk management and that sort of thing. And so I wasn't sure where I would go from there. So I decided to look at the programs that the community college had. And they had one that was computer forensics and security. I knew a little about the cybersecurity industry from my dad and some work that he does. And I, of course, did some more research and looked at the job market and what the opportunities would be. And it was clear that that was the best path for me.
LEANNA: 35:02	I wasn't sure how I would perform at college knowing that I didn't put as much effort in my first attempt. But the first semester was only a couple classes in the summer, and I got A's in both classes. And that was really the spark that I needed to keep me motivated. And every semester, I continued to get a 4.0 GPA. I ended up getting a scholarship, which is when I started thinking about my next steps. I started thinking that perhaps I should go for my bachelor's degree. And Slippery Rock University, which is local here, had a newly revamped cybersecurity program. And it aligned with my existing courses, and I decided to continue. I have persevered through a pandemic and online courses and continued to keep up my GPA. And there's a pretty good chance that I'll graduate with honors from Slippery Rock in December of this year. I feel like my experience here at Alteryx has been unique because I am not a traditional student. I'm not a traditional intern. I didn't get here on what some people might call a normal path. And I hope that my story is proof that you can change careers. You can have curveballs come and still come out on top. And that if you put in the hard work and the effort and most importantly, have the support of a great group of people around you, that you can achieve whatever it is that you want to do.
MADDIE: 36:39	[music] Thanks for listening. Check out our show notes at community.alterex.com/podcast to see some behind-the-scenes photos of Leanna, Liza, and George meeting in California and to learn more about the early-in-career programs at Alteryx. Catch you next time. [music]

LEANNA: 00:00 Three and a half years ago, I lost my job. And I was crushed. I was really discouraged. I didn't know what I was going to do. I considered just finding another full-time job similar to what I was already doing and trying to continue. And then I thought, "Well, this could be an opportunity for me to go back to school." And I thought about getting an associates in business management or something just to get that degree. And my mom actually prompted the question of, "What do you really want to do with your life?" And I'm so glad she did because I started thinking about what I really wanted to do. I wanted to do something with problem-solving, something with investigating. When I worked at the bank, I kind of liked risk management and that sort of thing. And so I wasn't sure where I would go from there. I feel like my experience here at Alteryx has been unique because I am not a traditional student. I'm not a traditional intern. I didn't get here on what some people might call a normal path. And I hope that my story is proof that you can change careers. You can have curveballs come and still come out on top. And that if you put in the hard work and the effort and most importantly, have the support of a great group of people around you, that you can achieve whatever it is that you want to do. MADDIE: 01:23 [music] Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data science and analytics culture. I'm Maddie Johannsen. And today, we're going to hear some inspiration from the 2021 interns at Alteryx. You just heard from one of them, Leanna Jewart, who in this episode is joined by two other interns, Liza Kliminsky and George Williams V. They documented their experience through their internship, and this episode will feature clips from those audio journals. Whether you're a student, a career changer, a mentor, a people leader, or just someone looking for a bit of inspiration, keep listening. This episode is packed with insight into the Alteryx intern program itself, but it's also full of general life and learning advice that will leave you feeling excited for your next challenge. Let's meet the interns. LEANNA: 02:13 Hi, my name is Leanna Jewart. I'm from West Sunbury, Pennsylvania. I'm an information security intern at Alteryx. I have a husband, three kids, four cats, and a dog. I love to ride bikes and play video games and spend time with my family. I'm currently a senior at Slippery Rock University here in Pennsylvania. I'm studying cybersecurity with a concentration in security governance. I also have an associates degree from Butler County Community College in computer forensics and security. I previously worked in the banking and financial services industry. Three and a half years ago, I decided to make a career change and make the switch into cybersecurity. LIZA: 03:01 Hello, my name is Liza Kliminsky. I am working as a sales operations intern this summer on the sales systems and data team. I'm originally from Aurora, Colorado, a large suburb of Denver, but I'm actually a first-generation American as my entire family is originally from Russia. So I got to grow up with two beautiful cultures in my life. I currently attend school up in Boulder, Colorado at CU Boulder, where I am a business student with a dual emphasis in business analytics and marketing as well as a certificate in operations and information management. At school, I'm involved with TAMID Group, a consulting student organization that works with Israeli tech start-ups. And starting this next semester, I have the incredible opportunity to act as a co-president with LAIS, the Leeds Association for Information Systems. Outside of school, I love seeing live music. I mostly attend a bunch of EDM shows, since Denver is the hub for all things related to EDM. I also love camping, traveling, and exploring anywhere I can. I definitely try to take advantage of all of the fantastic outdoorsy activities that we have here in Colorado. GEORGE: 04:11 My name is George Lloyd Williams V. I am a data science intern. Prior to Alteryx, I've had four technology-related internships, three of which were in the data science/machine learning space. I've taken a longer time to finish undergrad than most of my peers, but there are some processing in college longer than I anticipated. Fun facts about me are that I am an avid metalcore or post-hardcore fan. And if you're not sure what those are, you can just refer to me as a metalhead. I used to enjoy playing video games in my free time, but nowadays I spend my time in the gym or watching self-help motivation or programming videos on YouTube. And I occasionally watch some anime or a Netflix show when I'm winding down to go to sleep. MADDIE: 04:57 Leanna, Liza, and George, all had different motivations for seeking out an internship. And I think this is an important part of the story because they're also relatable, and they give a few pointers for how they searched for internships and ultimately landed in the Alteryx internship program. Here's Leanna. LEANNA: 05:13 When it came time to start looking for an internship role, I knew that I wanted something that would give me the most experience in the area I was studying, which is security governance. And through the application process, I found that searching for cybersecurity internships was really a challenge because the opportunities ranged from software development to risk and compliance and everywhere in between. So it was really important that I found a company that would give me the best experience and support my future goals. And when I came across the position for Alteryx, I honestly had never heard of Alteryx before, but I started doing the research and saw a lot of interesting things about their growth and the things that they have been doing. And I found it really interesting. After my first interview with Alteryx, I was even more excited to hear about this role because it was exactly what I was looking for. It was a role in security governance, which was so difficult to find. And then hearing about the plans for the internship and the company culture and all the things that I would get to experience, I knew that I had found the right position. GEORGE: 06:34 My prior experience in the machine learning, data science space made me want to continue going down that path as I had found the work very meaningful and relevant at my previous internships. The data science field is my number one preference when searching for a position or narrowing down options. So it was a relatively easy choice to make on whether I should apply or not. Alteryx has shattered all expectations I had when coming to work at a tech company. Everyone I've talked to tells me the same narrative concerning company culture, which is, in a nutshell, that they love it. The work-life balance is excellent. People wholeheartedly enjoy what they're working on. And then if you feel overwhelmed, you should communicate your feelings to someone. There have been zero red or even yellow flags, and there have only been pleasant surprises like finding out the interns are going on the Next-Leaders retreat in California. LIZA: 07:23 I was required to take a business analytics class for my degree through CU. And the class was based around learning Alteryx Designer. My professors were actually two Alteryx partners that have their own data consulting firm, and they were by far my most favorite professors throughout my entire college career. I fell in love with using Designer and thought it was the most fun tool I'd ever used. And I also loved the people that were directly associated with the company. And I found myself really longing myself to work there. My previous experience was heavily tilted in the marketing world within the music industry. And I really wanted to get into the tech space. Alteryx very quickly became my dream company to work for. I actually applied to every single internship job opening on the career site to better my chances of being selected for something. I was originally selected to interview for a sales internship, but that didn't really align with my career goals. So I was able to discuss this predicament with the recruiter and was able to project my passion for the company's mission and product and actually ended up getting an interview for my current position with the sales operations team. Alteryx has by far exceeded any expectations that I had by a million miles. The biggest surprise that I've had was that every single person I've spoken to at the company feels like a friend. GEORGE: 08:44 Being selected for an internship or really any position in general that you want can be summed up in two words; straight joy. I'm sure everyone who applies to jobs know how much of a literal grind it can be. And honestly, not having the daily ritual of searching for positions and filling out technical applications and doing technical assessments or projects takes a large weight off a person's shoulders. I texted all of my friends and told them I got one of the gigs of a lifetime because I've been looking for jobs and internships pre-pandemic. My parents were elated for a few days, but then I got lots of, let's say, advice on how I need to do well. I'm hoping to gain confidence as a developer. I believe that imposter syndrome is very prevalent in the tech industry. And as a very logical thinking student, it is easy to compare yourself with [still?] projects and no years of experience to devs that have many industry projects completed and years of experience. Fortunately for me, I have been surrounded by great full-time employees that see my potential and cannot wait to see what things I build. LIZA: 09:54 When I was selected for the internship, it felt so surreal. I remember getting the call, getting an offer, and immediately running to my roommate. And we both kind of jumped around the room with excitement for a little while. After almost 400 job applications, being selected to work at my top choice felt like a real dream come true. When I was starting, my goals were oriented around mostly just learning as much as I could. I wanted to build my personal and professional development through networking, impactful projects, and overall gaining valuable experience. LEANNA: 10:28 When I found out that I was offered the position, I was so thrilled. I went through the process of signing my offer agreement and all of the steps that they needed me to complete, pretty much the same day. I was so excited. I just really wanted to get in there and get hands on. I also wanted to have the ability to interact and network with other professionals to get feedback, because that is essential to really understanding the industry, the positions. And everyone has a unique story and a journey that tells how they got to where they are. And it's not a clear-cut guide for me, but it does help me understand that I am in control of my story, and I love to be inspired by others. MADDIE: 11:22 Here's George sharing what he learned about data drift as a data science intern. GEORGE: 11:27 So what is data drift? Data drift is a change in the distribution of data contained in the train and test file. And there are three types of data drift. There is covariate shift, prior probability shift, and concept drift. My team was directed to focus on covariate shift, as this refers to the change in the distribution of independent variables present in the training data and the test data. So for example, if you have a training dataset with a column of incomes from a decade ago, but your test data's column of incomes is from this decade, naturally, the distribution has shifted. In this case, covariate shift will focus on a specific feature, and that will be the income. It is important to ensure that the data is consistent across time. Models can be trained and deployed, but may deteriorate depending on new data being sent through it. For example, a model can perform extremely well in 2019 and present great results, but little by little, the model's accuracy can deteriorate in the long term, which can lead to many problems and issues. Ideally, you want your training data to be a good representation of datasets you input to get accurate predictions. To avoid these issues, it's very important to take timely action once a data shift occurs. MADDIE: 12:47 Let's hear from Liza, who worked on the sales operations team. LIZA: 12:51 Many of my projects have been centered around making business processes more efficient, which is ultimately what any operations team does. Almost all of my optimization was done within Alteryx Designer. My first project of the internship was [account?] team members, where I built a workflow that automatically updates team member roles in Salesforce. Next, I had new hiring notifications, a workflow that notifies the sales operations team of new hires for the upcoming week. This might've been one of my favorite projects because I could see it working weekly and see my direct impact on the team every Monday, when the email sent out. I've also received a couple of workflows from analysts on my team, and I was asked to consolidate them to make them run more efficiently. LEANNA: 13:37 One of the biggest things I've learned about working in security governance is that the job is always changing. So when I started this internship, the expectation of the intern project has really shifted. It has been a great experience because I have had the opportunity to-- instead of focus on one singular project, I've been able to see many different areas of security governance. I've worked with policies and control mapping. I've worked with business continuity and business impact analysis. I got to spend a lot of time using Alteryx Designer and kind of honing those skills and utilizing those to produce the metrics. I worked on phishing campaigns. And I've also created metrics surrounding that as well. So my intern project has really changed, but it has allowed me to have a more broad experience than what I initially expected. LEANNA: 14:35 When I started this internship, I had no intention of setting out to learn Alteryx Designer software. I knew that it was something that I needed to get familiar with, but I never imagined that I'd be using it as much as I have been over the last 12 weeks. I took it upon myself to begin going through the learning path to get familiar with Alteryx Designer. And then the part of my project was involving some data and creating metrics. And typically I would use Excel. And that's what I was familiar with, and that was kind of my go-to. But some of the people that work for Alteryx really encouraged me to use Designer and to see the benefits. And I have been able to create some insane workflows that I am so proud of. And I've learned so much, and I've been able to produce valuable data to my team. And I feel like it's been such an important part of the work that I've done here. And I am so happy that I put the time in to learn the product. S5: 15:47 [music] Hey, everyone. This is Dan Menke. I'm the manager of community operations at Alteryx. Fun fact about me, I'm a huge Formula One racing enthusiast. Actually enthusiast may be an understatement as I eat and breathe Formula One racing. The sport encompasses so much of what interests me, from the cars to the technology, the drivers, the track configurations, and of course, how they use analytics to enhance the performance of the car and drivers. So when Alteryx announced our partnership with McLaren Racing, needless to say, I was slightly stoked. And I'm excited to invite you all to attend our Alter.NEXT event, "Accelerate your analytics," featuring McLaren Formula One Racing Team CEO, Zak Brown and celebrity guest speaker Mindy Kaling on October 26th in the Americas, October 28th in A-PAC, and November 4th in EMEA. You'll get to hear transformation stories powered by Alteryx and get inspired for your next analytic breakthrough. Plus, it's free. To register, check out the link on our show notes page at community.alteryx.com/podcast. See you there. MADDIE: 17:09 [music] So the interns worked on these insightful projects and got some awesome hands-on experience in the fields they want careers in. But things got even better with a trip to Alteryx headquarters in Irvine, California. GEORGE: 17:21 So we found out really early on that we were going to be going to HQ and meeting all the interns and the early-in-career team and some executives in person. And I remember being on this call with my video on and some other people had their video on. But when we got this news, everyone's reaction was just universal. And it was just jaw dropping to the floor, "Oh my God, we're going to California. We're going to go see HQ and meet everyone." LEANNA: 17:49 I am here in California. I'm getting ready to meet up with the rest of the interns to head over to the new office in Irvine. LIZA: 17:58 When I first landed in SoCal, my Uber driver picked me up to take me to our hotel, I had instantly fallen in love with the area as soon as we drove out of the airport. The palm trees and beautiful weather made me even more excited to connect with everyone. GEORGE: 18:12 Arriving at HQ, we were greeted with camera crews and drones and all the execs giving us applause. It was interesting to be treated like celebrities. I like that a little bit, maybe a bit too much. Well, I'm not sure. We'll check back on that later. But we toured the Irvine office. And it's an amazing campus. The gym was a little small, but the scenery and ambiance of the office was just beautiful. MADDIE: 18:38 While in California, the interns participated in a learn-a-thon called Solving It Forward. LIZA: 18:43 We were split into eight individual teams working on four different projects. Each team was partnered with a nonprofit organization that had a business problem that needed to be solved. My team had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with Integrate Health, a nonprofit focused on providing quality and accessible healthcare to people in Togo, Africa. We worked on this project for about a week and a half. The business problem that we needed to solve for was based around finding outliers within the nonprofits data and building strategies as to how we can drive overall efficiency and effectiveness of the org. My team, The Data Dogs, actually ended up winning the award for best data and insights among all eight teams, and that was a really cool feeling to have. GEORGE: 19:27 We were able to showcase all our hard work from the week prior [to?] various nonprofits. And it gave me a lot of satisfaction to know that all the nonprofits gained meaningful results to take back to their organizations. LEANNA: 19:39 And then we also had an opportunity to give back to the community by making blankets for the nonprofit group called YANA. LIZA: 19:47 YANA, You Are Not Alone. And they provide care packages for people going through cancer treatment. I truly appreciated the extent to which Alteryx went to find organizations that are impactful and give us the opportunity to make a difference. MADDIE: 20:01 There were also fun team-bonding activities. Here's Liza. LIZA: 20:05 We were split into teams of four, and were given the task to build a McLaren F1 car using some axles and wheels that had been provided. The rest was up to us. We had two to three hours to find materials, build the car, and return to the office for the final competition. My team and I ended up going to target to build our car. Our plan of action was to find an existing toy car, swap out the axles and wheels for the ones provided. After all, if it was a real toy car, it would work well, right? At least we hoped so. After finding a toy that fit our requirements, we went to one of our team member's houses to build it. When our car looked spick and span, we returned to the office and it was time for the moment of truth. We all walked over to a small hill and released our cars. My team was definitely a little disappointed as our car didn't move. A big part of our F1 car was the beautiful launching system that we built for it. But we were only allowed to use this mechanism for one of the trials, but at least it moved with the system. After our trials, we had team presentations about our car, our story, and how we created it. Then we went to a restaurant for food and drinks and waited for the winners of the bonding event to be announced. Tragically, my team ended up in last place, but we couldn't complain because the other teams really impressed with their innovative F1 building skills. The day was packed full of excitement, and it was so great to be able to make more personal connections rather than over a screen. The entire team has so many incredible people, and I was touched that I was able to participate in such a fun event with them. GEORGE: 21:40 Throughout the summer, we also had intern trivia games and a tie-dye event. And these also served as a nice break in the day, assuming I was able to have the time to get my things done and attend them. There were zero stress, fun activities where we got to compete in games and attain bragging rights for winning. And overall they served as a good way to form closer connections to our intern class. And I would highly recommend attending all of these events if you're an incoming intern because like I said, they're fun and you get to meet-- you get to get closer to your co-workers. LEANNA: 22:14 Now that we've been able to meet face to face, I've been getting to know the other interns on a whole different level and watching all the other interns interact and spend time together and make long-lasting friendships. It was just so great to be able to finally add this piece to our experience and meet everybody face to face. The early-in-careers team has done such an amazing job at providing the interns with a well-rounded experience. And this Next-Leaders retreat has just been the absolute icing on the cake of a tremendous internship experience. The amount of effort and thought and time that they've put into every single detail of making this a phenomenal experience and exposing us to all different types of opportunities is just incredible. I am so thankful to the whole early-in-careers team for all the work that they've done and time and attention that they have given all of the interns. LIZA: 23:19 The biggest key takeaway that I'm walking away from this summer with is that I now know I want to stay in the data-tech world. The intellect, the speed, and the talent that the company showed me exists in the world was nothing short of inspiring. I value the people that I was exposed to this summer. The talent at Alteryx is one of a kind, and to have been able to be part of it as an intern during my college career made me feel so excited to start my professional one. From everyone I spoke to this summer and the projects that I worked on, one thing was very evident. You should be passionate about your work and feel fulfilled by it. Another obvious lesson that was re-solidified in my head is that you should never stop upskilling yourself and always keep pushing yourself to be better. I loved seeing and truly feeling the ambition and drive of other team members. Overall, the biggest takeaways from this experience is that you should love what you do and never stop working towards your dreams. GEORGE: 24:12 So the key takeaways from the internship, I've a bunch of written down. So I'm just going to go into them. And then if I have more to say, I'm just going to say what I feel is applicable here. So starting off, you should take your work seriously with the caveat that you should expect it to have problems. And what I mean by that is, I really believe that you should be a try hard and that everything you touch should be gold when you hit it off, but then you get feedback on it and there's a bunch of problems, things aren't as great as they should be. And you go back and you revise it, and then you make sure it's gold once again and then you hand it back off. I think that this really enhances your learning capabilities because you need to absorb everything that your superiors or the people who are better than you in your field are telling you to do so that you can eventually get to where they are one day, right? And if you don't take your work seriously, you're not going to really care or be in the correct mindset to foster a growth mentality. So with that being said, we're going to move on to point two, which is, people at Alteryx are very much willing to help you. And that is mostly due to the company culture. But on an individual level, they want to help you because they were in similar situations to you in the past. And if you join a company like Alteryx who fosters the growth mindset and being a better human and contributing to a cause that's greater than yourself, then people are naturally going to adhere to this and want to help you and want to watch you grow and succeed. And so if you don't know something, it's better to ask earlier than to ask later. And your mentor or manager will tell you if you need to worry about the specific feature or the specific problem now or not. GEORGE: 26:08 If you're having problems, communicate them early. Coding problems, I would wait between 20 minutes to an hour for myself trying to solve it. And if I was still stuck at that time, I would be asked to talk to my manager. My manager literally is like, "If you're stuck 20 minutes, max an hour on a problem, you need to come to me, and we need to get it resolved." And I think that's really great because I'm the kind of person that is very prideful and I want to figure things out on my own, but that's not really conducive to development on a strict timeline, right? And then for my final point, I just want to say that in a lot of cases, soft skills go farther than technical skills. Technical skills, however, extremely important. You absolutely need them, right? You have to know how to do things for your job. However, if you know how to communicate effectively and you know how to be polite and respectful of other people's time, then people are going to naturally want to be around you. They're going to want to work with you. They're going to include you. You're going to find out a lot of information. And there's not a whole lot of things you can do on the technical side to get people to like you other than being a master of your craft, I suppose. But I'm an entry-level guy. I don't have years of experience. There's no way I can be a master of my craft. So what do I need to do? Well, I need to be polite to the people who know more than me, and I need to absorb all the advice that they give me along my journey. LEANNA: 27:51 The biggest thing I've learned over this whole transition in my life is that no one can do it for you. You have to do it yourself, but you need the people to support you. And that is really important to understand. I would not be where I am today without my champions and my cheerleaders and the people that picked me up whenever I was feeling down. And there were times that I had to pick myself up, but having the other people around me that cared about me and helped me take care of myself and accomplish the things that I needed to do, was essential to getting me where I am. One of my favorite parts about this whole program was the Intern Buddy program. It was really surprising. I didn't expect it. I wasn't even sure what it would entail. But having a person that is not part of my team, but is a part of Alteryx. So they understand the culture. They cared about my journey. They cared about what was going on. And I could really share anything, any thoughts, feelings, and they would check in with me at least once a week to see how things were going. And there was more than a handful of times that those emails and those chats happened at the exact time that I just needed that little bit of pick me up. This all kind of goes to my advice of having a good support system and taking it anywhere that you can get it because all the encouragement and all the support that you can get really makes a world of a difference. LIZA: 29:31 As a student who entered college and is walking out having changed their major three times, I knew that when I found data and analytics that that was exactly what I wanted to do. It felt perfect for me. However, having switched majors a few times and years of feeling lost, it felt difficult to grasp how to remain competitive among students and candidates that were doing what I just fell in love with for years. This sales ops internship was my first, even remotely technical role. All of my professional experience before was based within marketing, mostly within the music industry. And after beginning my classes, learning Python, SQL, and Designer, I knew very fast that I wanted to pivot into the analytics world. The biggest thing with data and analytics is practice. I would complete my class assignments and projects and focused on truly understanding the concepts and methods that I was using so I could easily talk about them and explain them to other people. I think the best thing to do when trying to figure out what you want to do career wise is research and reaching out to different people. LinkedIn is such a helpful tool to connect with people professionally. And it's very helpful to see what people are actually doing. GEORGE: 30:38 Data science is a very broad field. And in a nutshell, I would say that if you're not a programmer and you enjoy deriving interesting information from data using analytical techniques, then data science is probably the path one would want to take. On the flip side, if you are someone who enjoy solving complex technical problems and building something from the ground up using software and critical thinking, then the engineering route is the path I would recommend. Both paths are rewarding. But for me personally, there's a certain satisfaction from creating something from nothing. General advice I would give to people pondering the two would be to either for data analytics, find some data and figure out what analytics you can derive from it and really pay attention to how you feel throughout that whole process. And then on the engineering side, build literally anything you think would be cool and then show off that creation to other individuals. A lot of engineers find side projects extremely enjoyable, and they love talking about them. And additionally, it is an easy way to connect with people in the industry. LEANNA: 31:47 There are so many things I'm going to be taking away from this internship experience. The exposure to the role has been incredible. I've gotten a really great view at what security governance, risk and compliance looks like. And that was something that I was really looking forward to. Whenever I started the internship, I wanted to see what it was really like. And I feel like I got a pretty well-rounded experience in that respect. Something else I learned is how important it is to me that I work for a company that values me. The amount of time and effort that Alteryx has put into me as an intern really shows how much they value their employees and not just for the work that they do, but in developing their career and their future and helping them achieve their goals. And that is something that's very important to me. And I didn't realize how possible it was for an organization to care about me that much. The EIC team had put together so many different events. And I participated in so many things that I've gotten to learn about the company, develop skills, just learn way more than I even expected. So I'm able to take away a lot more than I really initially expected, and I'm so thankful for it. LEANNA: 33:06 When I was 18 years old, I had no desire to go to college. I was really focused on just doing whatever I wanted to do. And my parents said that if I didn't go to college, I had to get a full-time job. And so that's what I did. I got pretty lucky and I started working at a bank. And that was kind of the start of a relatively sustainable career. I worked really hard and worked my way up through assistant manager, branch manager. I eventually worked to get my next job. And it was enough. It was enough to sustain my family. I always said that I would eventually go back to college. I would like to get a degree whenever the time was right. It just never seemed feasible or that I would have enough time. Three and a half years ago, I lost my job. And I was crushed. I was really discouraged. I didn't know what I was going to do. I considered just finding another full-time job similar to what I was already doing and trying to continue. And then I thought, "Well, this could be an opportunity for me to go back to school." And I thought about getting an associates in business management or something just to get that degree. And my mom actually prompted the question of, "What do you really want to do with your life?" And I'm so glad she did because I started thinking about what I really wanted to do. I wanted to do something with problem-solving, something with investigating. When I worked at the bank, I kind of liked risk management and that sort of thing. And so I wasn't sure where I would go from there. So I decided to look at the programs that the community college had. And they had one that was computer forensics and security. I knew a little about the cybersecurity industry from my dad and some work that he does. And I, of course, did some more research and looked at the job market and what the opportunities would be. And it was clear that that was the best path for me. LEANNA: 35:02 I wasn't sure how I would perform at college knowing that I didn't put as much effort in my first attempt. But the first semester was only a couple classes in the summer, and I got A's in both classes. And that was really the spark that I needed to keep me motivated. And every semester, I continued to get a 4.0 GPA. I ended up getting a scholarship, which is when I started thinking about my next steps. I started thinking that perhaps I should go for my bachelor's degree. And Slippery Rock University, which is local here, had a newly revamped cybersecurity program. And it aligned with my existing courses, and I decided to continue. I have persevered through a pandemic and online courses and continued to keep up my GPA. And there's a pretty good chance that I'll graduate with honors from Slippery Rock in December of this year. I feel like my experience here at Alteryx has been unique because I am not a traditional student. I'm not a traditional intern. I didn't get here on what some people might call a normal path. And I hope that my story is proof that you can change careers. You can have curveballs come and still come out on top. And that if you put in the hard work and the effort and most importantly, have the support of a great group of people around you, that you can achieve whatever it is that you want to do. MADDIE: 36:39 [music] Thanks for listening. Check out our show notes at community.alterex.com/podcast to see some behind-the-scenes photos of Leanna, Liza, and George meeting in California and to learn more about the early-in-career programs at Alteryx. Catch you next time. [music]

This episode of Alter Everything was produced by Maddie Johannsen (@MaddieJ).
Special thanks to @andyuttley for the theme music track, and @TaraM for our album artwork.

Alter Everything

Episode Guide

94: Overcoming challenges and forging career paths

Panelists

Topics

Transcript

This episode of Alter Everything was produced by Maddie Johannsen (@MaddieJ).
Special thanks to @andyuttley for the theme music track, and @TaraM for our album artwork.

Alter Everything

Episode Guide

94: Overcoming challenges and forging career paths

Panelists

Topics

Transcript

This episode of Alter Everything was produced by Maddie Johannsen (@MaddieJ).Special thanks to @andyuttley for the theme music track, and @TaraM for our album artwork.

This episode of Alter Everything was produced by Maddie Johannsen (@MaddieJ).
Special thanks to @andyuttley for the theme music track, and @TaraM for our album artwork.