About Me
Evan Reese CDMP, CDVP2, Data and Business Leader
My Story
Like many others in Technology and Data in particular, I did not set out to work in a technical position of any kind. My background is in Math and Statics and my first jobs while computational in nature were all business positions. These were great opportunities but always left me with more questions that I was excited about answering myself, and this desire to learn sent me down the rabbit hole to my current career.
Approach
My perspective to all challenges is quite unique. I do not view any project or program I work on as either an isolated component of the business, nor do I look solely at my deliverables as something that must check a box, rather both must fit into the context of the business needs and deliver real value.
As a true Polyglot Full Stack Developer, Solutions Architect, and Business Leader I know the importance of balance, simplicity and speed to delivery. That being said it is impossible to have expertise in everything when you work on such a variety of projects, but it is also important to know your strengths. My strongest area always has and always will be Data. On the Data side I have expertise in working with complex data structures and cutting edge technologies relevant to Data Storage including RDBMSs, HDFS, Document Databases, and various others. I can write code, stand up CICD pipelines from scratch, automate, model, architect, and present any aspect of building data structures for Applications, Data Warehouses, and Analytics Platforms.
Career Progresion
Evan Reese
Having served in a variety of data related roles, my approach to Data is all encompassing. This paired with a never ending desire to learn has become the main drivers of my ability to deliver world class solutions with regards to Data.
Through hard work and a thirst for knowledge I have been able to rapidly progress my career and obtain an enterprise wide view in a very short amount of time. While developing a technical repertoire throughout internships, I started in the business. Originally functioning as an Operations and Business Analyst I did not like the gaps in my understanding of the initiatives I was a part of in regards to Data and IT as a whole leading to a career change to Data.
My decision to pursue architecture came in 2017 after listening to an overview of Enterprise Architecture by Sam Holcman. His presentation outlined the Zachman Framework and how to implement it to deliver all encompassing solutions. The full scope, and potential having this view enabled, drove me to pursue developing my skills as a Solutions Architect.
2008 -2010
Within a week of graduating high school I started my first internship at Energy Solutions. Over the three summers I spent with them I learned what my true passion was and ultimately what I wanted to do for a career. Under the guidance of an amazing team I built my first application, learned SQL, and streamlined an operational process. The application I built at Energy Solutions was the first thing I had ever worked on that I enjoyed so much it didn’t even feel like work.
2011
This actuarial internship at Genworth Financial was a life changing opportunity. I got to work with an amazing team, was a part of a world class intern program that taught life skills I use every day in the workplace, and was able to put my degree to use. The other thing this internship taught me was what I did not want to do for a career, but not in a bad or negative way. I loved my time at Genworth, but it was not as exciting to me as the other work that I was doing with Data and Software Engineering and at the end of the day gave me the knowledge and foundation I needed to pursue my passion.
2012
Operations Analyst
In this role at Capital One I built a variety of applications, delivered various automation solutions, and streamlined operational processes through statistical analysis. While in this position I automated form routings in call centers, completed an analysis capable of generating approximately $3MM in annual savings, and designed an application framework using Excel, SAS, and Teradata to allow other analysts to build applications to track operational data
2013
Senior Operations Analyst
I was one of Capital One’s 12 month promotes from the 2012 ADP (Analyst Development Program) class. After my promotion I went to US Card Recoveries where I managed the forecasting and compensation structures for various 3rd party collection agencies. While this was a great chance to flex my business analyst skills, the position did not have the hands on technical opportunities I desired
2014
Senior Data Analyst
I switched to a Data Analyst role in the same department at Capital One to be able to work on the structuring and building of data sets that I was passionate about. In this role I owned various reports, worked on developing engineered data sets for various business initiatives and was a part of the first round of analyst inducted into the Hadoop POC
2015
Senior Data Engineer
As the Hadoop POC spun up at Capital One I was hand picked to be a part of a Data Engineering team to build out the Production Data Lake. On the team I served as a Lead Developer and designed the framework for our ETL pipeline and implemented a modular solution that was able to be utilized for rapid development of ETL pipelines for additional data sources after the first flow was released to production
2015
Data Analyst – Data Quality
Here I joined a regional financial institution where I owned all aspects of data related to credit cards, served as Product Owner and Scrum Master on an Inmon style warehouse build, owned the MDM strategy for customers, prospects, and households, and designed various testing/verification frameworks
2017
Data Track Lead – Architecture and Overall
In August 2017 I was hand picked to lead the data efforts for the implementation of a Commercial Loan Origination tool and process. I owned overall strategy for my portion of the initiative as well as guided the work for the Architecture, Governance, Engineering, and Business Intelligence tracks.
2018
I joined LSI as the Data Architect for the company. With the responsibilities of the Chief Data Architect I worked hands on with the team to Architect, Model, Engineer, and Deploy a Data Vault 2.0 Warehouse for our Multi Tenant SaaS Applications, and to design and develop a Data Vault automation Java Application
2019
Around mid 2019 my scope was officially expanded to include data enterprise wide in addition to the data for the technical products we sell
2019
In late 2019 I was promoted to be the manager of the Data Engineering, Business Intelligence, and SalesForce teams at LSI and in function fill the role of a Chief Data Officer while still remaning hands on with the teams.