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PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

I am a husband, a dad, and an analytics professional.

Ever since I was a young boy, I have been an actor, storyteller, and creative writer. At the same time, I began writing computer code in second grade (hey, LOGO and Applesoft BASIC count!), and I have always been pretty good at math.

After a few years as a developer, I discovered analytics and found that I could build a career by bringing these two paths together. An analytics career has allowed me to keep my technical skills sharp through analyzing and delivering insights across many variations of data, but it has also allowed me to hone my artistic skills through captivating my audience with compelling stories and charisma.

Mantra

• Data and analytics should not be activities that simply check the box. They should be fundamentally intertwined into the process optimization and decision-making culture of an organization.
• Analytics and Data Science are not valuable until the outcomes can be applied to the business. If Analytics is not driving business change, then it’s more or less a waste of time and money.
• Curiosity as a characteristic is even more valuable than coding. I can teach someone to code, but a good analyst will have heart.

Details

Name: Peter Eliason
Current Employer: EasyKnock
Education: MS (Predictive Analytics) Northwestern University – Evanston IL (Grad. 2017)
Education: BA (Computer Science) Luther College – Decorah IA (Grad. 2003)
Address: Minneapolis MN
Email: peter@petereliason.com

Work History

VP Business Analytics and Interim CTO: EasyKnock – New York, NY (Jun 2021 – current)

• Executive oversight of technology delivery and release of new features and products.
• Fostered strong culture of trust and job satisfaction across data engineering, data science, and analytics. 
• Envisioned data and technology roadmap advocating for initiatives that lay down infrastructure rails which will allow analytics and ML to scale with the business.
• Integrated real-time lead scoring engine into sales workflow, prioritizing leads and driving conversion
• Consolidated data visualization portfolio into manageable, yet extendable package. 
• Improved data security by implementing PII abstraction layer.

Icario Health (formerly Revel) – Minneapolis, MN (Nov 2017 – Jun 2021)

VP of Analytics

• Led integration of data ecosystems and analytics organizations post M&A (across 2 successful acquisitions).
• Developed insights framework and grew organization to address changes in new business priorities.
• Led conversations on ML/AI strategy, differentiation, and scaling plans with capital partners.
• Composed data-as-an-asset vision for leadership team, creating excitement for new data products.
• Grew data team of 1 to a team of over 22 data scientists, data architects, data analysts, data engineers, and machine learning engineers.

Director of Analytics and Data Science

• Created value-driven analytics practice, integrating analytics and predictive modeling with product, sales, professional services, and marketing teams.
• Tested and integrated several data enrichment vendors
• Orchestrated implementation of enterprise-wide analytics database compiling streams of disparate sources across company and provided common view of product performance to internal and external clients. 
• Directed integration of data science products (recommendation engine) into platform using coordinated agile teams of data scientists, data engineers, and machine learning engineers.
• Engrained scientific techniques into product features, ensuring repeatable results and growth.

Sr Manager Data Science: Polaris – Medina, MN (Feb 2016 – Nov 2017)

• Strategic Data Science role establishing predictive analytics solutions across Digital, CRM (Sales), Merchandising, Field Ops, Finance, Engineering, HR, and Marketing.
• Managed several teams of data science vendors and interns.
• Led evaluation and selection of cloud-based analytics and big data environment.
• Encouraged continual cycle of marketing/digital testing, results, and improvements.
• Architected cloud-based anomaly detection system capable of catching model/part failures 12 months prior to historical baseline. Estimated savings of $2 billion over 10 years. Designed and built the mathematical processes using R and other AWS tools. Coordinated with business and IT to scale solution and staff new capability.
• Partnered with business product teams to deliver optimized media spend allocations resulting in driving $10MM in incremental profit annually.
• Improved lead close rates by 20% by identifying key areas of customer experience and CRM process gaps.

Sr Manager Analytics: Olson – Minneapolis, MN (Apr 2013 – Jan 2016)

• Fostered hard work ethic, critical thinking, and methodology through managing team of Olson analysts.
• Constructed vision for analytics improvements on retail and hospitality clients.
• Led analytics on multiple accounts delivering $121MM incremental sales, annually.
• Translated data into understandable, actionable recommendations for executives.
• Created content for and orchestrated quarterly business reviews and weekly reviews with executives.
• Provided guidance on analytics measurement methodology and test design.
• Developed predictive models using SAS and R, leading to 48% improvement on incremental sales.
• Expertly crafted and automated customer dashboards and scorecards using concise and intuitive data visualization techniques.
• Proactively sought and reviewed tools and resources to drive efficiency and automation across all of Olson analytics: For example, Tableau, Alteryx, demographic appends, Hadoop, and Python.
• Delivered end-to-end CRM and Loyalty strategy, forecasting, economic modeling, test design, marketing files, reporting, and insights.

Manager Marketing Analytics: SUPERVALU (Feb 2009 – Mar 2013)

• Managed team of 45 analysts (onshore + offshore). Ultimately responsible for quality and timeliness of deliverables.
• Improved return by 27% year-over-year through effective test design, analysis, and recommendations.
• Served as primary business owner for successful Unica CRM implementation ($5MM IT implementation).
• Partnered with cross-functional groups in merchandising, private brands, digital/email, and shopper marketing to deliver campaign design recommendations, measurement, and improvements.
• Improved efficiency by automating reporting processes, reducing manual labor by 2000 hours annually.
• Established standards for Teradata SQL and SAS across Analytics Department. Created on-boarding curriculum for technical contractors and new hires.

Project Manager/Senior Programmer: Accenture – Minneapolis, MN (May 2004 – Feb 2009)

• Managed ad hoc analytics team comprised of onshore and offshore analysts
• Project managed several large IT implementations in addition to analytics work.
• As a developer, built Java and .NET web applications with interfaces to SQL Server and Teradata databases. Also, programmed custom ERP applications and ETL processes for clients.

Programmer: Fastenal – Winona, MN (Jul 2003 – May 2004)

• Performance tuned SQL queries in Oracle and built PeopleSoft applications

Education

Masters of Science, Predictive Analytics (MSPA)
Northwestern University – Evanston, IL
Covers a wide range of statistical applications and tools driving the field of predictive modeling, machine learning, and analytics. We used SAS, R, and Python to build complex models from Marketing, Web, Financial, and Social data

Bachelors of Arts, Computer Science
Luther College – Decorah, IA 2003
Focus on computational theory and programming with additional minor in Mathematics. Member of Nordic Choir

Software

• AWS / GCP / Cloud Architecture
• Python
• R
• SQL
• SAS
• Tableau
• Alteryx
• Excel
• Raspberry Pi

Recognitions

Tableau Qualified – Exam Passed Sept, 2014
Kaggle Competitor – Several active competitions with some competing as an individual and others as a member in a group.

DOMAIN SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE

Strategy, Leadership, and Application

• Data Science and Machine Learning
• Data Engineering
• Cloud Infrastructure – Hosted Solutions and Data Processing (AWS)
• Marketing Analytics
• Merchandising Analytics
• CRM & Loyalty Analytics
• Web Analytics
• Forecasting
• Web Scraping and Social Listening
• Social Analysis
• Leading Others and People Development

Tools

• R
• Python
• AWS (Amazon Web Services)
• SQL
• Excel Macros (VBA) and Pivot Tables
• SAS
• Tableau
• PowerBI
• Unica

Hobbies & Interests

• I enjoy being with my family
• Hiking  – I enjoy spending time outside, and particularly being able to visit the mountains on occasion.
• Fishing – I like to fish in my home state of Minnesota, and that means ice fishing
• Football (NFL) – Particularly the Vikings (I’m from Minnesota, so I don’t really have much choice!)
• Programming – I enjoy learning new programming methods and applications, particularly when they apply to data science. Currently getting into Raspberry Pi programming and circuitry.
• Data – Large amounts of data, in general, interest me. I enjoy figuring out patterns and trying to explain the world using information that’s available, but not necessarily obvious.