Heather Whiteman, Professor & People Data Enthusiast - The Power of People Analytics

H@H: Ep. 66 – On this week’s episode, professor Heather Whiteman joins host Ray Guan to talk about all things people analytics (PA). Heather talks about how she became interested in working with data and how she’s spent her career marrying analytics with human capital. We discuss the evolution of data and its effects on PA, including why some data scientists who succeed in the hard sciences fail at PA. Finally, we wrap with why PA is important for all business leaders, and why you should strongly consider adding the PA elective this fall.

Episode Quotes:

On the uses of PA today: “People analytics has become a necessary approach to [measuring] squishy things like knowledge, collaboration, ideas, and goodwill.”

On the danger of not using human judgment in decision-making: “If you build these models, but you don't think about their consequences...they can have ripple effects and [...] affect people's lives, their livelihoods, their families, opportunities and outcomes.”

On her PA class: “It is a class that you have to be comfortable being uncertain. People, analytics is not like physics. It's not like finance. There aren't right answers. There is data, there is information, and then there's a lot of understanding context and situation and outcomes.”

Show Links:

• Heather Whiteman: | LinkedIn | Website
• 5 V’s of Data Science
• Book rec’s: Weapons of Math Destruction | Data Feminism
• People Analytics Class Syllabus (login w/ Haas email)