About Storm.
Background & Expertise
Hi! I'm Wendy Lawhead and I have over 25 years of experience working technical roles within healthcare, logistics, retail, automotive, casino gaming, and Department of Defense/NAVY. My diverse background is in data science, statistical analysis, project management, process improvement, and automation.
I've led several successful modernization projects for organizations providing them innovative report solutions and analytic environments: Pfizer, McKesson, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (ALSAC), West Cancer Center & Research Institute, FedEx, Harrah’s Entertainment, Autozone and the U.S. Navy (Office of Naval Research).
Business Purpose
I established Storm Analytics so I could provide guidance to organizations who are interested in both decision support and automation solutions. Throughout my career, I have been trained in various methodologies to generate value and insights from data. I can help your organization achieve its business objectives with data engineering, automation, machine learning, statistical analysis, and data visualization techniques that will optimize your processes.
I can help you build decision support solutions and develop foundational KPIs/metrics to track your performance effectively. I am also experienced in AGILE/SAFE development, design thinking, use case development, and project management. My solutions are custom designed for your organization's specific needs.
Approach
My relationship with a customer often starts with discovery: identifying and analyzing analytics opportunities. I will work directly with your stakeholders to develop a business case and will present to your key decision makers to demonstrate business value. Together, we will develop the framework and strategy to implement decision support systems which generate data-driven insights. Your organization will change the way decisions are made.
Next, I will develop a proof of concept (POC) or minimum viable product (MVP) for your organization. I will serve as your primary advanced analytics lead, or I can work with your existing analytics team depending on the need. I will also serve as a primary liaison between your stakeholders and your ITS department.
My solutions may incorporate statistics, operations research, machine learning, artificial intelligence, decision science, cognitive science, software engineering, business intelligence, human factors, and organizational behavior to produce the most appropriate model or suite of models to bring value and provide solutions to business problems.
Finally, solutions are developed, tested, deployed and scaled into a production environment. This includes quality testing at every level and ensures the most reliable and scalable solution possible. I will collaborate with your staff throughout the process.
Data monitoring through data visualizations (dashboards) or quality reporting tools can provide your organization visibility into its progress in achieving your business objectives. Continuous improvements can be made to the processes through AGILE methodology and incremental updates.
Technology
- Warehousing: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Snowflake
- Data Science: DataRobot, Dataiku DSS, Alteryx
- BI/Visualization: Tableau, PowerBI
- Low code transformation: Alteryx, Tableau Prep
- Statistics: SAS, SPSS and R
- Languages: SQL, Python
- Orchestration: Airflow
Social Responsibility - Memphis Community Representation
As an active member of the Memphis technology community, I have served as a Collaborator at the UMRF Research Park, led the Memphis Tableau Users Group, and have informed the Data Science Community of trends and innovation in data science.
I volunteer my expertise to assist on the Boards for both Memphis Oral School of the Deaf and Veritas College Prep Charter. I have also assisted CodeCrew in the past with data science and analytics support to help positively impact STEM education for youth in the Memphis community.