Photo by Jack Looney Photography

Affiliation:
Professor of Research and Deputy Director, Social and Decision Analytics Division, Biocomplexity Institute, University of Virginia

Educational Background:
BA, Economics, Trinity University
PhD, Economics, The George Washington University

About Stephanie
I have led a nomadic life. Both my parents were in the Air Force, so I was born in Wiesbaden, Germany; lived in Washington, DC; spent my elementary school years on an Air Force base in Sacramento, California; and went to high school near Annapolis, Maryland.

We moved to Maryland when my dad, an Air Force officer and IT specialist, was assigned to Vietnam. My mother, a high-school English teacher, later went back to school to get her master’s in library science. Both my parents were voracious readers, and I remember our house was full of books, reading, and learning.

Growing up, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, so I was going to major in political science. The first year of college, I was a day hop (what they called commuting students) and my dad needed the car on Thursday for his carpool. So, I took economics instead of political science. I fell in love with economics and statistics the first day of class.

My professor worked with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to place her students in summer jobs. That is where I met my husband, who is also an important part of my journey. I applied for and accepted a full-time job at BLS when I graduated. I worked in the Producer Price Index and Consumer Expenditure Survey divisions.

Eva Jacobs, then the Consumer Expenditure Survey division chief, introduced me to the American Statistical Association in the 1980s. The ASA has been an important force in my career and personal development, initially as I participated in the Caucus for Women in Statistics and later other sections and committees.

At the wise old age of 39, I decided to go back to school to get a doctorate in economics. I loved going back to school and, although it took me nine years going part-time, it changed my life, allowing me to pursue positions at the Census Bureau and National Institute of Standards and Technology. I then moved to the Science and Technology Policy Institute, a small research group that provides policy analysis to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. That is where I met Sallie Keller, who was the institute director at that time.

Our paths crossed a few years later, when Sallie invited me to join her to create the Social and Decision Analytics Division, now located at the University of Virginia. We have built a data science research group together over the last five years. We are working with communities to repurpose their massive administrative data flows to inform their policy decisions. Our ambition is to develop the theories, methods, and tools to implement our vision of data science for the public good. Creating this research group has been the hardest, but also most rewarding, challenge of my career.

Each stage of my career has had successes and failures that fade into the past as I engage in today’s challenges. Today, success for me is training the next generation of data scientists and building capacity for data science, literacy, and ethics in our communities, including local governments, the Army, and the federal statistical system.