Prominent female tech exec’s approach to mastering big data — Elizabeth Cholawsky // HG Insights

Quotes

• “On what led her to the tech community, despite her non-tech education and background. “The problems we have in politics and international relations are solvable objectively if you understand them, so very early on, I got into analysis and data. I did computer modeling for conflicts analysis.” - Elizabeth“A lesson I learned is not to rest on the laurels of how you’re doing something today, because it’s going to be a standard and there’s going to be something better to do that is even more in-depth and interesting in the future.” - Elizabeth “All inputs from website interaction, activities from your marketing data can be overwhelming, you get so many signals and so much noise and it can be hard to figure out what is the actionable data.” - Ben “Prior to working with Valueclick, the industry was more about and thought of as brand marketing, that it’s an art and not a science. But, with the advent of internet advertising, marketing became much more of a numerically data-driven discipline.” - Elizabeth  “It was a big change from being a functional leader to lead and interact with cross-functional groups of equally astute and knowledgeable people in their own right. One of the things I did was convince and cajole instead of doing commanding control.” - Elizabeth “Sometimes, it seems to take longer to be recognized when you’re a woman in tech, in my experience. You have to be more confident and more persistent.” - Elizabeth “Female leadership is not a one size fits all. It’s constant progress, the tenacity of working at it so that you can take in what you’re doing well, modify your behavior and learn from people you admire.” - Elizabeth “It seems as you get farther along in your career, finding the right role is more challenging.” - Ben“The core of the HG Insights IP is around the technology installations, so its a big data play where we use AI, machine learning, natural language processing, role-based algorithms.” - Elizabeth “If you want to lead a group and focus on bigger problems, learn to keep at it and not get tired of what you’re doing. Make sure you have enough creative problems to keep your own brain going. This is absolutely critical.” - Elizabeth“Be persistent and never think you’re above actually getting your hands dirty with the actual facts and data that apply to your business.” - Elizabeth