About Me
My name is Jon, and I love data. I'm the Director of Data Science at Florida Blue and I specialize in bridging data science solutions with business initiatives. I spend most of my work days collaborating with technical teams (i.e., my team) and various business functions. Over the course of my career, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to best bring data clarity to decision-makers.
Click here to view my Resume!
I have two masters degrees - one in applied math and one in business. I obtained my first masters from Indiana University of PA in 2014 (applied math) and my second masters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (business). I also have completed two multi-month certificates - one in machine learning engineering from Udacity in 2017 and one in data science from HarvardX on edX in 2019.
The best part about me is my family and my faith. I have a beautiful wife and two children, a daughter and a son. We live in the sunny state of Florida, enjoy occasional trips to Disney World, more frequent trips to the beach, and daily rosary walks.
Presentations
Presenting complex topics to audiences of varied backgrounds has evolved into one of the more common job functions required of me. As a result, I have had the opportunity to speak in front of large audiences ranging from 50 to 300 people. While most of my presentations contain far too proprietary of infromation to share, I have had the benefit of putting together some that can be external facing. This section is dedicated to sharing those I am able to share.
Caring with Algorithms
Caring with Algorithms is a presentation that I gave to a local meetup focused on artificial intelligence called AI Connect. The target audience in this forum sat more on the technical side allowing for a bit more detail in some of the slides.
Amplifying Real Intelligence with AI
Amplifying Real Intelligence with AI is a presentation that I gave to the Analytics, Finance, and Actuarial departments of Florida Blue during an onsite all employee event. All proprietary information was retracted from the version I am sharing here.
Statistical Storytelling
A core aspect to my job as a data scientist is to explain data concepts in a way that resonates. More often than not, the audience for my descriptions come from a non-technical, non-mathematical background. As a result, I find myself using analogies and exercising storytelling to get points across. As most of this is done informally, I have also put together various stories over the years, some fictional and others realistic, to describe certain data concepts.
Note: Some of these stories were published on other platforms, including Quora and LinkedIn, but were all originally authored by Jon Wayland.
