Eric James Stephens, PhD's Linkedin Analytics

When I was in fourth grade, I soaked toothpicks in cinnamon oil and sold them at school for 10 cents. My teacher couldn't have a bunch of kids running around with toothpicks, so they banned them during the morning announcements. I saw opportunity: free brand awareness. I broke the toothpicks in two, making them less conspicuous, and charged 25 cents for each half. I used the profits to buy a bucket of green army men. That's what I do—I create solutions. When I was in sales, I made an Excel spreadsheet to estimate my commissions. I showed it to the CEO after I found an error on my paycheck. Rather than get annoyed, he saw what I built, and soon most of the reps were using it too. When I was a grad student, I knew how to write a grant to get funding. Others in my program weren't having the same success, so I built a workshop. The next round, we had 23 of 24 grants approved for more than $15,000. When I was a teacher, I was spending far too much time per essay on grading. I developed a rubric that cut my grading from 40+ minutes down to 5 minutes while providing actionable feedback to students. Within six months, I was giving trainings to multiple faculty from multiple disciplines about how to use the rubric for their classes too. When I was a data analyst, I learned that the CEO was planning on speaking to members of a state congress about his product. I combined external datasets with internal datasets to build a Tableau dashboard. It broke down the company data based on congressional voting districts. I also built dashboards that allowed users to investigate 400+ suicide notes written by K12 students. I also built an interactive dashboard showing the total market value of the entire US market based on sales territories and pricing schemes. I also built an interactive dashboard that generated over 20,000,000 unique data points—all in full sentence format so they couldn't be misinterpreted. When I left my job as a data analyst, I used my new skills to build a new solution: databases that support job seekers. I create content on TikTok, so I built an interactive database of that content. People ask me if I know anyone for a job, so I built a database of job seekers with over 550+ academics. I love to create. I love creating content, and I love working with people. I know what to do with a product, & I know how to work with the experts who know it better than I do. Now I get to use everything that I have become to leverage data and AI to answer questions about more than $2B worth of construction contracts. #TranslateAcademia #HireHigherEd