As an undergraduate, Kathy Ensor was fascinated by probability, statistical graphics, statistical theory, and computers. At age 19, she wrote a Fortran program that could play chess and optimize the next move based on a simplistic probabilistic algorithm and data gleaned from the user of the program. She was thrilled to eventually land in a statistics career, though, as it captured all her interests. Hired at Rice University, she built the statistics department from the ground up and served as chair from 1999–2013. In 2021, she was elected president of the ASA and established the IDEA Forum to showcase how statisticians improve lives. While Ensor believes all these accomplishments are important, she says she derives her energy and continued commitment to the profession from the amazing community of statisticians and data scientists, her collaborators, doctoral alumni, and students whom she mentored throughout the years.
A Statistician's Life
Denise A. Abreu
Growing up, Denise Abreu’s favorite subject was math. Thinking math and computer science were the same thing, she attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook to major in computer science. To her amazement, she genuinely enjoyed deriving maximum likelihood estimators, finding means and standard deviations, and doing matrix algebra more than she did programing, thus she switched majors. Today, Abreu is a mathematical statistician who has served within the federal statistical system for more than 23 years, first at the Census Bureau and then at the US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Merlise A. Clyde
Growing up, Merlise Clyde loved science, math, and the outdoors but really had no idea about careers in mathematics, let alone statistics. She discovered statistics while at Oregon State University studying forestry ecology. There was no major in statistics then, but she took every statistics course she could fit into her degree. Clyde ultimately earned her PhD in statistics from the University of Minnesota. She is best known for her research in Bayesian model selection/model averaging with mixtures of g-priors (and the associated R package BAS); however, her greatest accomplishment has been in Bayesian nonparametric regression using Lévy processes for Lévy adaptive regression kernels.
Amanda Koepke
Amanda Koepke knew from an early age she loved math and was introduced to statistics in high school. Despite loving statistics, she didn’t know what careers would be available to her upon graduation, so she majored in accounting at Texas Tech University. Eventually, she switched her major to psychology and mathematics and statistics. After finishing her undergraduate work, becoming a statistician seemed like the perfect way to merge her love of math and the social sciences, so she pursued her PhD in statistics from the University of Washington. Today, she is a mathematical statistician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she works side-by-side with scientists doing cutting-edge research.
Becky McNeil
Becky McNeil’s enchantment with statistics and mathematical modeling began during her undergraduate studies, when she learned about ecological models and population dynamics. After completing her undergraduate degree in mathematics and biology, she took a job in billing at a pharmacy that served long-term care facilities. This was her first exposure to raw data—the stories of health told by billing records—and those stories sparked a deep interest in using mathematical tools to improve health. Eventually, McNeil earned her graduate degree in biostatistics and additional training in epidemiology and bioinformatics. She is now a research statistician at RTI international.
Jill A. Dever
Jill Dever spent the first 22 years of her life in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky. Her interest in statistics started with her parents and math flashcards at the kitchen table. Later, her brother heightened her interest in math and taught her computer programming logic by sharing fun facts and projects from school. However, it was her University of Louisville professor who encouraged her to investigate biostatistics, owing to her interest in medical-based TV shows. So, off to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she went to earn her MS in biostatistics and later the University of Maryland to earn her PhD. She ended up at RTI International, where she has been for 25 years. One of her greatest achievements is coauthoring two books, including Practical Tools for Sampling and Weighting.
Rosemary Bailey
Rosemary Bailey grew up in the countryside northwest of London. In primary school, her classmates mocked her for being good at arithmetic, but her parents told her she should decide for herself who she wanted to be and ignore such comments. She did and earned both her first and second degrees in mathematics from Oxford University. She was president of the British Region of the International Biometric Society from 2000–2002 and is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and mathematics and statistics professor at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
Peggy Carr
Peggy Carr and her siblings were among the first African American students to integrate K–12 schools in eastern North Carolina. This challenging period of community growth, identity, and self-reflection inspired her intense interest in equity in education. She began to excel in mathematics and science, which eventually led her to excel at two historically Black universities—North Carolina Central and Howard. The first in her family to earn a PhD, Carr is also the first person of color to hold the prestigious, presidentially appointed position of NCES commissioner.
Ronnie Sebro
Ronnie Sebro grew up in Tobago, a small Caribbean Island, the third of six children. He was the first student from Tobago to receive a National Scholarship in the Sciences from the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. He graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biology and minor in mathematics from Morehouse College. He was also the first student at Morehouse to receive the Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellowship. Sebro’s career differs from most statisticians because he decided to go to medical school during graduate school. He spent his junior faculty years at the University of Pennsylvania and joined the Mayo Clinic in December of 2020. Recently, he was promoted to professor of biostatistics and professor of musculoskeletal radiology. He was humbled to learn he is one of a handful of Black male biostatistics professors and simultaneously one of few Black male radiology professors in the United States. This was one of the proudest moments in his life, second only to the birth of his son and marrying his wife.
Andrea Roberson
Born in Brooklyn, Andrea Roberson grew up in the suburbs of Long Island, New York. When she was a child, her father would tell her bedtime fairy tales. Her favorite, the tale of the African Princess of Mapungubwe—who was given the superpower of mathematics—could always compute the right solutions, earning her freedom from any threat. However, undiagnosed autism and ADHD created obstacles to learning and performing in the classroom for Roberson. Achievements in the mathematical sciences seemed an ill-fated dream. This changed when she met Nagambal Shah, who encouraged Roberson to persist. Today, Roberson is a leader in the US Census Bureau’s big data initiative. Her innovative research in artificial intelligence and machine learning keeps the nation as the world’s forerunner in the production of economic statistics.