In his first job after graduating from Adelphi, Jaime Dasso ’18 discovered a passion for the way data helps businesses make better decisions. Now he’s returned to Adelphi to pursue a master’s degree in our new graduate program in business analytics.
Give Jaime Dasso ’18 enough data, and he can make some pretty good predictions. He can take information from emails, texts and consumer credit reports and tell you who is likely to default on their next loan payment. With a decade’s worth of real estate prices from a neighborhood, he can tell you what the most profitable use would be for a vacant lot there.
Dasso can see information in data that others cannot. He’s not a fortune-teller. He’s a business analytics student and he’s on track to be in the first-ever graduating class of Adelphi’s business analytics program in the Robert B. Willumstad School of Business. Dasso will get his master’s degree in December.
Business analytics is the science of taking data collected by companies—whether in the form of numbers or natural language—and using it to guide decisions, cut costs and increase revenue. It has come to the forefront of business with the explosion of data that has accompanied the technology revolution. Analytics has fundamentally changed the way business leaders make decisions.
“You can use numbers to superpower a business,” Dasso said. “There may be ways to make better decisions hidden in those numbers.”
To get the story, Dasso and other data analysts use tools to extract, analyze and evaluate information. They use statistical languages like Python and R to write computer programs that analyze data, locate patterns in it and generate predictions on what will happen in the future based on what has happened in the past. Dasso just got certified in Python, so he can now use the language to build programs that will crunch data and turn it into graphics that tell the story behind the numbers, thus pointing the way to smarter business decisions.
No Midwestern Winters, Thank You Very Much
Dasso, 27, was born and raised in Lima, Peru. He came to Adelphi as an undergraduate transfer student in 2015 after spending two frigid winters at college in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “Coming from Lima, a step away from the equator, it was hard for me being indoors so much,” Dasso said. “It was so cold and gray for so much of the year.”
One summer, though, Dasso took some summer classes in New York—and fell in love with the city.
“I had a lot of friends from back home in New York,” he said. He liked the city’s energy, too. “Lima is a very congested metropolis, so all the people and cars in Manhattan made me feel at home.”
His dad, a graduate of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, suggested Dasso look into transferring to Adelphi. Some of his friends gave him good reviews of Adelphi, too. So he visited the campus and realized he had found a home. “I loved how quiet and green it was,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is my perfect place.’ The city is nearby, so I can go when I need energy, but I can study in a peaceful place.”
Dasso graduated from Adelphi in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a specialization in finance. He then worked for a year as a financial systems analyst at FIG, a digital advertising agency, where he realized he really dug data.
“After I got some work experience, I found myself with this new passion for digging into data to support human reasoning and decisions,” Dasso said. He loved that he could use analytics to put the best people on a project and save a client money, or help a client get the best return on an investment. “I like sifting through data and finding information in it that others cannot see,” he explained. So he came back to Adelphi for a master’s degree in business analytics.
Cutting-Edge Program
He loves the program. “I have a great relationship with my professors,” he said. “I am getting a lot of one-on-one attention.” Dasso said that Juan R. Jaramillo, PhD, associate professor of decision sciences and marketing, has been a mentor and inspiration. “He sparked my interest in data analytics when I took an undergrad course with him,” Dasso said.
Business analytics is a relatively new field, and it moves quickly. Dasso said his professors do a good job of staying on the cutting edge of developments in the field.
“It’s a new industry, and there are breakthroughs every week: new language, new codes, new algorithms. My professors are working in the field and know what’s going on in the industry,” he explained.
Dasso wants to work as a business consultant or for a technology company, two fields that rely heavily on analytics. Whichever he chooses, he believes Adelphi has prepared him for success.
“I consider myself lucky to go to Adelphi,” he said. “I can go out into the data science world and excel.”
Learn more about Adelphi’s MS in Business Analytics program here.