R&D division at Amway Corporation

Leah Jager was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her dad was a college mathematics professor and her mom taught middle-school math and English. From a young age, she liked playing school and hoped to someday be a professor like her dad. Jager’s first encounter with statistics occurred during a summer internship in a food lab within the R&D division at Amway Corporation. The goal of her project was to improve the taste of a beverage using varying concentrations of a flavor additive. She never succeeded in making the drink taste better, but she did become interested in statistics. Today, as a statistics and biostatistics professor at Johns Hopkins, she is inspired when she sees a student realize the relevance statistics has in their life.