Bharti Shinde – MSIS 2022

Pricing Data Analyst - Camping World

I have always considered myself an ordinary woman. I come from a very small town in India, where women have limited options to develop a professional career. But I always dreamt of working with the best in the world, in whatever I chose to do. So, it was obvious that I had to pursue higher education to achieve my dreams.

I decided to go to college in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, moving away from my family for the first time. Looking back, I realize that this was the first step on my ladder toward achieving success. I further did my MBA and started working as an Operations Excellence Manager for a reputed finance company in India.

While working as a professional for four years, I got introduced to market research and data analytics. This eventually led me to pursue my second masters from the United States. It was again a tough decision to leave behind my family and my old life in India and completely change my field from business management to information technology.

After a lot of research and consultations I applied for MS in Information Systems from California State University, and I was fortunate to get accepted to Cal State Long Beach. The Information Systems program at Cal State Long Beach was the perfect program for me because it had a good mix of management and technical courses. I started my master’s at the peak of the pandemic, which meant transitioning to virtual classes instead of in-person classes. Receiving an education by studying something entirely new, in a completely new format, and experiencing University life, virtually, was tough but the professors made the transition very smooth.

As a part of my MS program, I got an opportunity to work as a Teaching Assistant with amazing professors, where I primarily worked with MBA students and mentor them to use Analytical and data visualization tools such as Tableau and SPSS. This was the perfect opportunity for me to also grow my soft skills.

This summer, I completed my MSIS journey and was also fortunate enough to get an opportunity to work with one of the fortune 500 companies as a Pricing Data Analyst. I can truly say that I have learned from the best and am now working with the best.

I am still very early in my career and though, I make my family and my town in India very proud, there is still a long road ahead.

In the end I would just like to say, it doesn’t matter if you dream big or small, just work for it and make it happen.