Steven D.

From College Baseball -> Beating Vegas -> Building Business Data Solutions My interest in analytics started on the baseball field. I played college baseball when advanced analytics were just entering the sport. That was my first real exposure to how powerful data could be. We studied defensive positioning metrics based on opponent tendencies. Tracked exit velocity and swing speed throughout the offseason. Analyzed our own patterns in specific counts. I wasn't just playing the game. I was looking for edges in the numbers. After college, I took that instinct somewhere unexpected. I built basketball player prop projection models from scratch. Scraped NBA player and team metrics. Used predictive analysis and found inefficiencies the sportsbooks hadn't priced in. And beat Vegas at a 60.3% rate for an ROI of 15.6% over the first few months of the season before the sportsbooks limited my accounts. I decided to deepen my understanding of data in a business setting through an MBA Program in Applied Business Analytics. What I found surprised me. The same problem existed everywhere. Teams were drowning in raw, messy, unstructured data. Analysts were spending days cleaning before they could even start analyzing. With 5+ years in analytics, workflow automation, and financial data validation, that's the problem I solve. My work has included: • Processing millions of transactions to rebuild and validate financial and fraud models • Transforming raw datasets into structured outputs used for model validation and analytical testing • Validating payroll registers to ensure compensation accuracy and reporting integrity • Automating reporting processes that cut manual work and accelerated analysis Because the real value of data is not in collecting it. It is in making it usable.