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Nikki Msubo (M.A. in Applied Economics, 2014)

My relationship with SMU and the Economics department began in 2008, when I left home, South Africa, to pursue an undergraduate degree in Economics. My dream was to be an investment banker, so I majored in Economics with Financial Applications. After graduation I interned at a bank for 5 months before returning to start the master’s program in Applied Economics. I had all the intents of returning to investment banking after completing the master’s program.

However, this all changed after taking Predictive Analytics and Econometric classes with Professor Tom Fomby. My overall success and career path was truly shaped by Professor Fomby who introduced me to the field of analytics and its endless possibilities. He frequently showed us the application of predictive analytics in various industries; such as determining the probability of customers making future payments on time in the financial industry and campaign managers determining the target market/ customers. Since graduating from the Applied Economics program in 2012, I have applied analytics in two different industries, Marketing & Advertising and now Healthcare.

I am currently a Business Systems Advisor at NTT Data Services. My team and I are responsible for providing advanced Analytical Services to customers in the Healthcare industry. We use Data visualization and Analytics to deliver meaningful insights from complex data. For example, from IT Service Management ticketing data, we develop dashboards that allow service managers to identify anomalies, trends, and IT problems raised with incident tickets, to minimize the impact on our client’s operations. i.e. a hospital losing power will impact the care patients receive, or a nurse not being able to log into a system because she cannot reach the service help desk to get her password reset.  

I am so thankful I was introduced to Analytics, having this knowledge has truly opened doors to so many exciting opportunities.