Kevin Deng
Class of 2018
Hometown: Zhuhai, China
Undergraduate University: Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Class Year: 2017
Major/Minor: Financial Management
Current Employer: Applied Materials
Position: Business Intelligence Analyst
What appealed to you about William & Mary's MSBA program?
There were two important reasons why I chose William & Mary. One, the communication between me and the program was efficient in terms of replying to emails and answering my questions. William & Mary made me feel like they paid attention to me and that they cared about my decision. The other reason was that William & Mary offered one of the most comprehensive curriculums for an MSBA program. It was one of the few schools that offered machine learning and artificial intelligence classes.
What were some of the highlights you experienced in the program?
My overall experience at William & Mary was amazing. As an international student, I saw my biggest difficulty to be how I should adapt to a new culture and environment. I was lucky in getting a lot of help from my classmates, my professors, and also the program staff. A highlight for me was my first team project. My team worked closely together through the analytics to crunch all of the data to get some meaningful conclusions and make a presentation. It was a different experience, and it was very interesting. I enjoyed it.
Tell me more about what you're doing professionally.
In my current job, I do a lot of marketing analysis and provide data-driven solutions for different user group needs. I use a lot of what I learned at William & Mary's MSBA program in my work. I use analytical tools to build prediction models to measure market share or predict optimal sales revenue for upcoming quarters or years.
What excites you about the field of business analytics?
I think the most exciting side of analytics is that we can use what has happened in history to predict what will happen in the future. For example, in my current role, I built a prediction model based on what we sold in the past and purchased from other sellers. It helps us to have a basic understanding of how much our revenue will be and what kind of market situation we are in. It's very helpful for our company's leaders to design our future marketing strategy.
