STAUPELL ANALYTICS GROUP - ANALYTICS EXPERTS FOR NONPROFITS, IMPROVING FUNDRAISING
  • Home
  • About
    • Staupell Team
    • Testimonials
    • Partnerships >
      • Prospect Research Institute
      • Lityx
      • TouchPoints
      • Gravyty
  • Services
    • Fundraising Analytics
    • Prospect Development
    • Business Intelligence
    • Database Administration
    • Fundraising Optimization Solution
  • Training
    • Analytics Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence
    • Business Intelligence Visualization Reporting
    • Prospect Research and Management
    • Webinars
    • Classes >
      • Beginner Analytics Using R
      • Analytics Classes
      • Skill Builder Series
    • Workbooks
  • Blog
  • Events
    • Water Cooler Chats
    • Video Replays
  • Contact
  • Product

Driven by Data Blog

My Bourne Legacy

3/2/2018

3 Comments

 

​A celebration of Research Pride Month

A couple of years ago, I shared the story of how my father was a spy during the Cold War. Well, he was actually part of the Army’s Signal Corps, and his job was to supervise and train soldiers who listened to the Russians, the Chinese, and others. As a researcher whose job is to analyze data to guess at the minds and hearts of prospective donors, I have fond memories of both using my father’s stories for my own work and of trying to explain to him what I do for a living. He was always befuddled.

​His legacy didn’t stop with me. 
​My own stepdaughter, Bridgette, followed in the family footsteps. A brilliant woman – smarter than I am. When Bridgette was in grades school, she used to ask me to create algebra problems for her to solve. When she was a junior in high school, she explained heavy water to me and went off on an archaeological dig. She was younger than I’d want to admit before she learned how to beat me at chess (okay, 11), at Monopoly (okay, 14), and poker (okay, 23). 
Bridgette and Marianne
Bridgette visits on her way to Virginia for her Ph.D. residency, 2016
Just like I love solving the puzzle that a table of data presents, Bridgette loves to solve the puzzle of math and of patterns. When she interviewed with Barclay’s Bank to become a fraud detection analyst, she mentioned that she still made up math problems to solve. That served her well as she zipped through the bank’s interview puzzles. And then she enjoyed catching identity thieves, telling me some pretty hilarious stories (like the man who said, “Please tell my son that I will see him when I get home at five,” after catching the son trying to get a credit card under the father’s name).

The core skill in fraud analysis is detecting anomalies. A credit card application may have an answer that doesn’t match the pattern for that kind of applicant, or a phone reply to the security quiz that is either wrong or given after too long a pause while the thief looks it up. In other words, what I do with statistics software, my daughter does with her brain, her training, and her intuition. And we each work at the opposite end of the bell curve: I’m looking for the wealthiest and most philanthropic while she is looking for, well, the least philanthropic.
​
Now that she’s been promoted into management, Bridgette is earning her Ph.D. in cyber security. She’ll be detecting even more insidious characters to protect us from mass identity theft, a career that didn’t exist when I went to graduate school, because the world wide web was just being invented. And she’ll probably finally learn the statistics techniques that I use every day.
Bridgette
Bridgette getting an award for her training program, Barclays Bank

​One of my favorite visits with Bridgette involved us sitting on her couch and showing each other our favorite reporting tools. I kid you not – we are not the shopping at the mall types. Sitting there, showing her Tableau and SPSS, I recalled a time when she was about 10 years old. I asked, because grown-ups all ask, “Bridgette, what do you want to do when you grow up?”

She replied, “What do you do?”

I replied, “I am a prospect researcher.”

She replied, “I want to do that,” and went back to her GameBoy.

And she does.
3 Comments
Patti Whitford
3/8/2018 10:19:47 am

Love your story Marianne. "I want to do that" too...and still trying to. xo

Reply
Marianne Pelletier link
3/8/2018 10:28:52 am

Thanks, Patti!

Reply
Beckys Bucketlist link
11/28/2020 10:53:07 pm

Nice blogg

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Keep Informed
    Sign up for
    notifications when a
    new post comes out

    Sign Up Now


    Authors

    Marianne Pelletier has more than 30 years of experience in fundraising, with the majority in prospect research and prospecting.

    Greg Duke helps Raiser’s Edge clients to optimize their database by implementing data clean-up techniques and creating reporting structures, including dashboards and SQL queries.  He also facilitates data imports into Raiser’s Edge and database administration.

    Categories

    All
    Advancement Svcs
    Annual Giving
    Artificial Intelligence
    Assessment
    Big Data
    Blackbaud
    Branding
    Dashboards
    Databases
    Data Management
    Data Mining
    Data Prep
    Dependent Variables
    Donor Modeling
    Efficiency
    Engagement
    GDPR
    Giving Variables
    Linear Regression
    Machine Learning
    Major Gifts
    NFT
    Participation
    Productivity
    Project Planning
    Prospecting
    Prospect Research
    Push Technology
    Raiser's Edge
    RE NXT
    Reporting
    Research Pride
    RFM
    Statistics

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    March 2021
    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    September 2017
    June 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015

    View my profile on LinkedIn
Picture
© COPYRIGHT 2023 Staupell Analytics Group. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About
    • Staupell Team
    • Testimonials
    • Partnerships >
      • Prospect Research Institute
      • Lityx
      • TouchPoints
      • Gravyty
  • Services
    • Fundraising Analytics
    • Prospect Development
    • Business Intelligence
    • Database Administration
    • Fundraising Optimization Solution
  • Training
    • Analytics Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence
    • Business Intelligence Visualization Reporting
    • Prospect Research and Management
    • Webinars
    • Classes >
      • Beginner Analytics Using R
      • Analytics Classes
      • Skill Builder Series
    • Workbooks
  • Blog
  • Events
    • Water Cooler Chats
    • Video Replays
  • Contact
  • Product