Kate Walker, one of two summer 2017 Evolytics interns, is a second-year MBA student at the University of Missouri. She has a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering and accepted an internship with Evolytics to help expand her technical and analysis skills, along with softer business skills.

Why did you initially choose the Evolytics internship?

This past year, having been fully immersed in business school, I found myself missing the number crunching, analysis and optimization that was so fundamental to my engineering background, which led me to start looking at analytics. In addition, I have been considering a career in consulting for some time now, even since before I decided to get my MBA. I love having new problems to solve and using data analysis to make a difference, which is ultimately what drew me to Evolytics. Also, the fact that Evolytics is an entrepreneurial and small company was attractive.

How would you describe the culture at Evolytics?

To keep it simple, I will use three words to describe the culture at Evolytics: innovative, team-oriented, and fun.

This unique combination made it such a pleasure to have the opportunity to intern at Evolytics this summer. One of the core goals here is to evolve analytics, and everyone here has a passion for optimization. They are always looking for ways to innovate and find more value from data.

Every project I worked on during my internship involved multiple people, and more often than not, different people. The Evolytics’ culture fosters group work and collaboration. The vast knowledge and experience of the employees here allows for a wide range of combinations of teams to be most effective for assigned projects.
Finally, but most importantly to me, the culture at Evolytics puts a large emphasis on fun and work/life balance. Every year the whole company takes a day off to attend a Royals baseball game. The annual tailgate is a great team-building event, and it allowed me to get to know everyone on a different level.

While the tailgate is a big event, there are other, smaller ways that Evolytics fosters a fun working environment. A lot of us at Evolytics are gamers so when we found out how many of us played video games, we spent most of our lunch talking about the different games we like. Then we talked about the classic games like Tetris and ended up having a few tournaments. After that, someone got Super Mario 64 on their computer which they found you could Download from Gamulator and we took turns playing each level. It just kept slowly evolving so every lunchtime ended up with a group playing the same game! At this point, management realized that they can help make our lunches more enjoyable and now one of the meeting rooms has a Nintendo 64. On top of this, in the main area, there is a pool table, where sometimes, people stay, grab a drink, and play a couple rounds.
Personally, my favorite activity is Taco Tuesday. It is a pretty simple thing, but it helped assimilate me to the culture much faster, and it gives us all something to look forward to each week.

What kind of projects did you work on during your time at Evolytics?

Fortunately, throughout the internship I was able to work on a lot of different projects and learn some new skills. Evolytics strongly encourages learning new skills and was fairly open to matching our internship projects to our professional interests.

My first couple weeks during the internship were more focused on learning Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics as well as going through the orientation process, with a couple small projects sprinkled in. This allowed me to better assimilate to the Evolytics process and become familiar with the language of digital analytics. I also spent some time refreshing my Python and SQL knowledge, which I used later to help create dashboards in Tableau.

My largest project, however, was helping to create an attribution product using a channel stacking variable from Adobe Analytics. I worked closely with the Data Visualization team to develop Tableau dashboards using the channel stacking variable. Ultimately, the dashboards were designed to help clients make decisions on what type of attribution model to use, and inform business and marketing decisions based on those attribution models. We sought to make this attribution product as flexible and customizable as possible, so that it can be used by any type of client.

What was something you learned at Evolytics that you don’t think you would’ve learned in school?

One of the most important things I learned at Evolytics is how much of an impact digital analytics can have on a company’s success.
Although I spent a lot of time in school learning to optimize a wide range of things, websites were never one of them. In retrospect, it makes sense that in this day and age, there is a need for this type of work since everything is done online.

Along with that, I learned how to use both Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics to do basic reporting and how to look for areas of improvement.

Another valuable thing I learned was that, in an entrepreneurial environment, you must be proactive. Not only does this open doors to learn more, it helps out the team. A colleague may be swamped one week and you the next, but together it can all get done efficiently and effectively.

What surprised you most about your Evolytics internship?

What came as a complete surprise was how quickly I felt like I knew everyone and was accepted in the team. In past jobs or internships, I only got to meet those in my immediate department, and usually, that was only about five or six people. At previous internships, I never really learned how all the groups interacted and worked together. After a full week at Evolytics, I knew everyone’s name and how they fit into the goals of the company.

Another surprise was how seriously fun was taken. I feel like a lot of companies advertise how fun it is to work there by showing off the few big events they put on every year. I figured Evolytics would be the same and that I might get to experience one of the events during my internship, but it was a pleasant surprise to see the effort the team puts into having fun in between those larger events.

What advice would you give a future Evolytics intern?

The piece of advice I have for future interns is just as true as it may be cliche: do not be afraid to ask questions or ask for help. Not only will this help you succeed on your projects and individual development, but also in getting to know the other team members. Everyone at Evolytics is eager to help and so knowledgeable it would be a waste to not get to know them and learn from them.