Career Change from Personal Trainer to Data Scientist

January 2018

Hey Anthony,

I wanted to let you know that I have finally started my new career. I will be joining a top 100 enterprise knowledge management firm as a Senior Analyst in February. I will be a knowledge management consultant using my skills in natural language processing and semantic modeling to improve information architecture and IT systems design.

After completing your Career Quest program in May 2016, I designed my own online masters program in computer science, which evolved into a specialization in Data Science. One of the subtopics of Data Science is natural language processing and categorization using unsupervised learning (which fits my Introverted, Non-spatial-Intuitive-Feeler talent ballpark). My background in those skills gave me the opportunity to match well with the firm in my interviews.

So, now I will be working in Knowledge Management. Funnily enough, I see that KM is on the career short-list you gave me for great-fitting Non-spatial NF fields. And, learning about taxonomies and ontologies for my interviews, I could tell it is right up my alley and is a very qualitative and abstract subject matter.

Thank you for all your help along my journey! It is funny how life works out sometimes, and I got lucky to be starting in a field that should match well with my abilities and motivations.

-Connor

A little Background on Connor: he came to me as a recent graduate with a BA in Philosophy, Cum Laude. At that time, he had already gone back to graduate school to study health-sciences and had one year under his belt toward a degree in Physical Therapy. He was concurrently working as a personal trainer at a local gym to get an experiential test-drive for what it’s like to work with clients in this capacity. Something wasn’t clicking, he had a gut hunch that he was on the wrong path. He is among the rare few that had the courage to listen to his instincts and quit grad school to figure out what he’s really cut out for.  After our work together, he decided to design his own self-directed graduate studies in Data Science, which included 1500+ hours of lecture, programming and projects; all done by taking online courses through top universities, including Duke and Johns Hopkins.  This is extraordinary journey, not only because it’s a road less traveled by, but because he designed and executed a major career change in less than 2 years to a new field that’s well outside of his formal college education.