"Analytics” lacks definition. To me it means using understandable data to make decisions. 

The Why

My roots in working with data go back to my first jobs in politics — it was always easier to communicate with numbers when you're trying to persuade. 

The largest project in analytics I've worked on was when I headed the data journalism hub for Talking Points Memo, which utilized subject matter expertise in politics and the principles of digital communications. The crescendo was to product manage the PollTracker iOS app from conception to its release, from wireframes in my notebook to nearly 100,000 downloads. 

I focus on setting my clients up with simple dashboards and avoid tedious reports. There's a lot of detail in any analytics work, but the most important element is to boil findings down to a few key numbers and a simple bottom line of what those numbers mean.