J. Michelle Maraj is currently a Financial Systems Analyst at Lyft, where she is responsible for maintaining and developing Tableau dashboards for the Financial Planning & Analysis team.
In addition to her role at Lyft, Michelle has built dashboards on Tableau Public, claiming a Tableau Viz of the Day. She also placed in the Top 5 of the Women in Analytics Data Visualization competition in 2018 and 2019 with her Tableau dashboards.
Especially for the WomenTech Network, J. Michelle agreed to give an interview and share her story.
Are you excited to be among the speakers at the WomenTech Global Conference 2021 and what motivated you to join our community of 100 000 women in tech, minorities, and allies?
I am beyond excited to be chosen as a speaker for the WomenTech Global Conference 2021. In a lot of my technology courses in college I was one of a few females, and I found myself drawn and inspired by women who were trail-blazers in the field. I am passionate about sharing data visualization techniques because they are types of skills that can be applied no matter what industry or role you are in. I hope that I can inspire others to also be passion about improving the ways they communicate with data.
Share with us about your background, your journey in tech, and what inspired you to develop your career in this direction?
Discovering the field of data visualization in college was eye-opening to me, because it was the perfect combination of math, technology, and graphic design (three areas I have always been interested in)! I was working as a consultant prior to my job, but had picked up Tableau as a handy tool for analysis, and to use every now and then on a client. When I was recruited for my current role at Lyft where I do dashboard development for the Financial Planning & Analysis team, it was a dream come true to be able to focus on data visualization as part of my job. I now get to help people unlock insights with their data, and I look forward to continuing this work.
Who would you advise to attend the Global Conference and why?
Anyone looking to expand their network and learn from inspiring leaders should attend the conference. It's so easy to attend the conference from home, and to listen to a few sessions in between calls. With such a wide variety of sessions to choose from, I look forward to being inspired!
Get your ticket to WomenTech Global Conference in June 2021 to enjoy J. Michelle's talk "Common Data Visualization Mistakes" and learn from other inspiring speakers.
