What’s next?

When I joined Flatiron Health in February 2014, I had no idea what to expect. I had just moved to New York City – my second ever trip to the US – with two suitcases, crashed on my friend’s couch, and walked into the office in the middle of a snowstorm (I got in late on my first day because I was left stranded by the MTA – pro move!). I was on a 1-year visa and didn’t even know whether it was going to get extended after the year was up, or whether the 20-person startup I had just joined after finishing my PhD in England was even going to last that long.

Almost 5 1/2 years later I’m now looking back onto many late nights at the office, countless meals with my work family, a few drinks (just a few, really!), late night karaoke, rafting and ski trips, pipeline breaks and product launches, both great and absolutely horrifying client calls, several rounds of funding, an acquisition (us buying a company twice our size), another acquisition (this time us getting acquired), almost a thousand new employees, many farewells, wonderful relationships, challenging relationships, my first intern, my first direct report, my first time as a team lead, and my first goodbye to a company that I still talk about as “we” even though I officially left almost a month ago. As I like to tell people who ask me about my time at Flatiron: It’s been a wild ride.

So… what’s next? Honestly, I don’t know. I want to continue doing “data stuff”, but as a non-traditional (as far as the word “traditional” applies to a fairly new field) data scientist who puts data empathy and interpretability before building ML models, it’s going to be an interesting challenge to find the right fit for me. For now, I’m still based in NYC, enjoying the summer, plotting some travel, and reflecting on the things I’ve learned over the past few years.