"I was studying biomedical sciences at the university of North Florida. I worked hard, but realized if I went to med school, it would be another eight years. I had lost several jobs, two of them due to hurricanes, so I went into research at the Mayo Clinic. I enjoyed it, but once again, no future unless I did schooling for a PhD.

A friend who does data science mentioned Lambda School. The ISA was a huge selling point because it was the least risk to the most reward, and worst-case scenario Lambda school wasn't for me, I could go back to the research job.

Once I started the pre course work for Lambda, I realized this is where I could finally use multiple skills. With data science, you use problem solving, but you also involve statistics to understand what's going on with the data. And then as a data scientist, you're never just doing something on your own, you're always with a team. And these things started to hit my list on what I was hoping for in a future career.

"At Lambda, I did all my classwork during the day and I was a team lead part-time at night. That started to make things more difficult, but I don't regret it. Being a team lead, I was reinforcing what I was studying and I was helping people who were struggling. And that's the point of Lambda School – you overcome challenges and it's insanely rewarding."

I work as an Associate Data Scientist at Florida Blue in their customer service analytics department. It's a big health insurance company, and the amazing thing is the position implements my previous customer service and call center background, even my research at Mayo clinic and my interest in med school built upon it, so I just made sure to leverage everything I could. This job was a lucky fit.”