In the fourth and final data science speaker session William and Mary alum Alicia Frame spoke to us about her life and career. She graduated from William and Mary in 2007 and then went on to get a graduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. She also gave great advice that graduate school isn’t always the best option if you don’t know what you want to do. While at UNC, although her primary focus was a niche biology field, she also got a master’s in computer science. This led to her pursuing a career in data science, where she began doing predictive modeling based on chemical risks. She then switched to industry, working for Dow Chemical, working in the pesticide division to figure out the product’s effect on people and other organisms. After doing this for a while, she went to the Environmental Protection Agency to do extraordinary work. Following this, she bounced back to the private industry and began working at a startup. Here she did interesting work where she does target searching to look for new treatments for diseases. From her presentation, I learned some great information that I feel will be very helpful in helping me start my career once I graduate school and am still in school. She highlighted that math knowledge is crucial for data science, which might influence me to pursue more math and stats courses before I graduate. She also mentioned how valuable presentation skills are in her job and that these skills will be necessary for success. Another important point she made was the importance of having good technical skills regarding knowing several different coding languages. One massive point I learned from her was to avoid grad school for data science degrees since experience is oftentimes much more valuable. As a whole, this was a really enjoyable session where I learned quite a bit and I am thankful for the opportunity to attend.