[00:00:08] Lauren Burke: Welcome to Women in Analytics After Hours, the podcast where we hang out and learn with the WIA community. Each episode, we sit down with women in the data and analytics space to talk about what they do, how they got there, where they found analytics along the way, and more. I'm your host, Lauren Burke, and I'd like to thank you for joining us.
Today, I I'm so excited to have Joy Zhao joining us. Joy is an AVP of Advanced Analytics within Nationwide's Enterprise Analytics office. At Nationwide, she is a key liaison to the Telematics teams, and she oversees modeling efforts for business applications that require extremely high performance statistical and machine learning models. Joy has a really interesting background. She has an MD in Preventative Medicine and a PhD in Epidemiology. On top of that, she is a Data Science Leadership Coach and a Self Empowerment Strategist.
I've actually known Joy for a number of years through WIA. We met at the DataConnect Conference back when it was known as the Women in Analytics Conference, and I am just absolutely thrilled to have her joining us for an episode.
So welcome, Joy, and thank you so much for being here with me today.
[00:01:30] Joy Zhao: Thank you for having me, Lauren.
[00:01:32] Lauren Burke: And so just to kick things off, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and the path that's led you to data science and leadership coaching?
[00:01:42] Joy Zhao: Absolutely. Um, talking about my background, I have to take all of you back to how I grew up. So I was born and raised in China. Starting school at age of five and did not leave school until I was 30. So I spent many years at school. I love learning by the way.
Then everything kind of switched the direction because my husband decided to come to US to continue the study and pursue the research. And I just gave up everything and came to US. So everything I planned, it wasn't relevant anymore. So I have to start over again in US. And talking about in China, we didn't speak English, right? We spoke, we speak Mandarin in China. So language is the first barrier I had to overcome.
Then, you know, a couple years of really trying to find where is the starting point for my career. Luckily, I was blessed by many opportunities ever since I came here. I start my first job at University of Texas at San Antonio. So I work at a biomedical lab for about eight months. Then I follow my husband again when he came to OSU at Columbus, Ohio.
Then my second job started at Nationwide Children's Hospital back in 2009. That was a really, really nice journey. I learned so much. It was definitely a boost for my career. Two and a half years there, then I joined Chase Bank. So I fortunately, officially, I start leading a team as a manager.
So that was a big jump. A lot of people keep asking me many times, how did you make that leap? Because from a individual contributor as a research associate, at a nonprofit organization, then you went to a number one bank in US, you're leading a great team as a people leader. And also doing cool things. And data science, it's just two distinct different jobs.
So we could go back there later on if you know, our audience is interested, but that's where my journey took me to Chase where I started my corporate career in the data science. Five and a half years there, did a lot of great things with the team there. Really, it's another round of learning. The corporate career is quite different, uh, if you know, compared to the university and nonprofit research institute. But it was such a great journey. I met with a lot of great people.
Then that set a foundation, uh, in 2017, I joined Nationwide as a Data Science Director. So six and a half years passed, and this is another transformational journey for me, even though transitioning from banking to the insurance is quite a different path.
But I think, you know, there are a lot of underlining things, um, common in all my positions, which I follow numbers. That's what I really love.
So transformational journey at Nationwide, I would say this is a great company. I have been learning so much professionally, technically, but also as a human being, I went through my self transformation. I was able to learn so many things that I discovered my strength. Understand what's my superpower, what makes me unique, and what can I do to support others? You know, thousands more, thousands, thousands more people. So I felt like, you know, I had a growth journey, very young age.
Then I was having this, um, career. How do I say that? I can put it like, you know, you're really accumulating knowledge. Then you're in this early start of the career and have this slow growth. Then suddenly you have another transformational journey. So not only just a growth, but it's transforming you. So there are three kind of different stage if I go back and think about all, all these many years.
[00:06:13] Lauren Burke: Yeah, and it sounds like you've been able to really capture a lot of the variety that's in the data science, analytics, even tech space. You're going across industry, you're going across use cases, even across the size of the organization that you are working at.
And one of the things you brought up was supporting others along the way. And I think that ties really well into what you mentioned you're also doing now, which is leadership coaching, self empowerment coaching. So what inspired you to get into that area?
[00:06:46] Joy Zhao: Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to add a couple more things that you were asking the path to the data science. I want to bring you back to 20 years ago again, because when I was learning statistics, And people didn't understand what I could do, but I know I just love numbers. I love statistics because I can do so many things and to get information, to get decisions, to really understand what is behind the numbers, what can we really get out of the numbers? And now we call it insights, right? And you can actually really help with healthcare, medical, business, insurance, banking, all the real use for the human life.
I think I follow through that even nobody believe there's a future for it. Then a lot of people say you're just lucky you learn something. It became a big hit, you know, data scientist and became the 21st century sexist job. I would not deny, I think I am lucky in many ways and I'm blessed with this 20 years over the time. But I also think it's very important I stay on what I love. I stay true to myself and I hold on to what I love about numbers and I keep finding my way back when I was off track.
So add a little bit more on that. Then continue to the leadership because my journey has been so unconventional. A lot of switches, a lot of changes. Meaning I have faced a lot of challenges in my career, some of them, including the setbacks. So one particular situation in my job that I had the biggest setback ever in my career, the hardest time in my career.
Um, you know, back that time, I did not have a solid relationship with the team and I was physically challenged and had so much mental anguish about it and I rely on my faith how to, I had to pray every single day to actually show up at work. Eventually, I work with my leaders, my mentors, my coach at the company. We work through that. We find the solutions. We rebuild the trust. We improve the relationships. So everything looked great again, and they work great again.
So not only I came out stronger, I learned so much about myself. And I wondered, "Wow, I really hope I knew," that before so I could avoid a lot of situations. Life might be much easier. So that piqued my interest, really understanding, you know, from myself what went wrong before that I didn't notice. And what, what make it going great right now? So I have a lot of comparison, a lot of learning, a lot of discovery, and all of this all come together when I went to the IPAC coaching school.
So this coaching school was really the starting point of my transformation journey. It helped me understand energy. You know, the energy is everywhere in the universe and the energy is with us all the time. You know, our thoughts, our emotions, our actions. All have energy. I think that's the one thing that really unlock a lot of things for me, for my life. When I figure out myself better and I start paying attention to others and it kind of like a lot of lightning moments to me, like, "oh, now I see what's going on with this person," then you could help others much better. So that's how, you know, I started in 2019. It's only a couple of years ago. So transformation can be fast and amazing and powerful.
[00:10:46] Lauren Burke: That's so interesting. I really enjoyed hearing about all of the different pieces that went into this transformation. And I think that's such a good thing to emphasize. Because it's not just one step. It's not just one day, one switch you can flip. There's so many things that go into, not just career growth, but personal growth as well, and I feel like you've really captured that very well in the way that you said that.
[00:11:15] Joy Zhao: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Lauren. Even like a couple of days ago, I was sharing with team, you know, they were asking me to share my career journey. The one thing came up, my thought is live a life. Although we talk about a career, but it's hard to really succeed in career if living a life itself is a challenge.
[00:11:41] Lauren Burke: I absolutely agree. And so how do you think that comes into play? Your work life, your satisfaction with your job into all of the other things that we've just talked about?
[00:11:54] Joy Zhao: Oh wow, I have so much to say. I always think, speaking from women in technology world and also a women who, you know, for the women who, um, really care about the family, right? Because I'm married with my husband for 22 years. We're raising two children, two boys. You know, one is a sophomore at OSU, the other one is a fifth grade.
So family is really important for me, as you have heard. I give up everything, not once, not twice, just because I, you know, prioritize my family. So I say that because I know what I wanted. Even when I was young, I know family was so important. I was willing to give up things that's going really well and starting over.
And that's really important thinking back because I had a laser focus priority. So now, you know, a lot of people know me like, "Oh, you know, Joy, your career is good because you don't have to cook and you don't have to clean. You don't do a lot of things in your house. And of course, you spend a lot of time developing your career." And I sometimes like, yeah, you are right. But there is a long journey, back then until now.
What I wanted to say is partnership is important. Partnership at work is important. Partnership at home is important. I, my husband, Michael, he's incredible. You know, he's so, he's such a loving person. He's also very talented. He's incredibly smart as well.
You know, 22 years of the marriage, we kind of take turn. If you think life is a driving trip, right? A road trip. Every time you're in one car, you can only have one driver and the other person will support you looking at the map and, you know, um, getting you the water bottle, right? If you think about people take a turn, right? If you're tired, and then the other person will drive and then they switch roles. I say that because I think my marriage, my life is a partnership that my husband and I have been building together. And there are time I give up everything supporting him. And there are time that, you know, he is taking steps that supporting me more.
So we're taking turns at different time. Um, if that makes sense, because we talk a lot about partnership at work, right? We wanted to have a great partnership, strong stakeholder. We wanted to have a great leader. We support each other so we can all grow. And we also wanted to have mentors and peer relationship.
So that that equally important between home and the work. So I think that's, you know, I just want to call out and I sometimes say, you know, there are a lot of debates. Can women have all, right? That's that's a very long debate, can we have it all? My way of saying it, yes, we can have it all. It's just not at the same time.
You don't want, don't try to have it all on every single day, right? We have so much energy every single day, or every different time of the life stage. We want it to be clear about our priority because we can choose. We have that freedom so we can choose what matters to us. Then we can spend our energy on things that matter most.
[00:15:44] Lauren Burke: Absolutely. I think the phrase that we throw around so kind of easily, work life balance. When you really think about it, right, it doesn't mean that's an equal balance. It doesn't mean like it's a seesaw equally on each side. Sometimes you focus more on work. Sometimes you focus more on the life side.
And I think you captured that really well that you, to do that, you both need support at work and support in your personal life as well to make sure that you are crafting that balance and you are still focusing on the things that you want to focus on, whether that's your career growth and the support you need in that, or whether it's your personal life, and the support you need with that.
[00:16:25] Joy Zhao: That's a good summary, Lauren.
[00:16:29] Lauren Burke: Thank you. And I know that's something you mention in your self empowerment coaching, right? These strategies that you use for self empowerment in and out of your work life, in and out of your personal life. So what kind of strategies do you use and would you suggest for others?
[00:16:47] Joy Zhao: So I do want to say a little bit more about this self empowerment because I summarize this as my superpower, thick skin. And what it really means there are three elements about it.
The first one is confidence. I don't think anyone can argue with me the importance of the confidence. A lot of time that confidence involves taking a risk. Because you don't know, you know, when we say we take a risk because that's something new and it's something we didn't have experiences, right? When that thing comes out, it's exciting, it's scary. How can we... raise our hand and get ourselves out there. And, you know, waiting for other people's assessment a lot of time. It's not like you ask for it, then you will get it. It doesn't work that way. So this confidence is the first very important thing of the three elements.
And the second one is perseverance. Giving up is easy. Staying on, figure out the solution is not that straightforward. Sometime it takes months. When I was mentioning to you my hardest time in the career, that took me eight months to figure it out. How long can you stay on if something is really important for you and it gets tough? What keeps you strong in until you figure it out? I know what helps me, right? I have faith. I'm a Christian. I also have this thick skin helping me, empowering me every day. But we all need to find out, you know, that higher power and superpower, that we can really have the self power.
And then the third one is a resiliency. Honestly, it's really hard to recover from failures. I have many failures. If you think things didn't work, how to, you know, come back and do something different.
I had many failures, right? With all my degree that I couldn't find a job. I was jobless twice. And it could bring a lot of sense of, like, shame. Like, why couldn't I find a job? Am I not good enough? We have to get over all of that and keep coming back and keep bouncing back from all the things that didn't work. So that resiliency, you know, is really important on top of confidence and perseverance. And I think for every single word, there are a lot of things behind it.
You know, how can you show up authentically? Eventually, it all leads back to the self acceptance. Right on the surface. We say, Hey, you have such a superpower. You showed out with confidence, perseverance, resilience, then you dig a little deeper, right? Well, yes, because I'm authentic. I care less about the judgment.
I can never say I don't care about the judgment, Lauren. I still do. I care less about the judgment. I can manage those better. I can manage that. not let them get into my head more often. Then if you take another layer deeper. It's I figure out a way, accept myself, just be who I am.
[00:20:04] Lauren Burke: It definitely feels like you've taken a little bit from every part of your journey. The challenges you've faced, the lessons you've learned, and you've been able to bring those all together to figure out what works for you, what doesn't work and what key pieces you feel like could transition to support others if they were to follow a similar strategy, which is great.
[00:20:26] Joy Zhao: Yeah. So, you know, there are a lot of stories I could tell that instead of just saying about the framework. There are multiple stories, um, I often share. So for example, like taking risk, a lot of people talk about risk, right? And a lot of people, in fact, have reinforced taking risk. It was something really served them.
So if you think of today where I am is really successful, I would have take all of us back to three years ago. That telematics team just started. And we were looking for a new leader. I was not an actuary. I'm still not an actuary. And it was a brand new team. I did not really have all the knowledge and skills.
And at the bottom line, what does success even look like? You know, as a leader, we don't really have a clear idea how that looks like, right? We know we wanted to grow this platform. We want to build a lot of amazing products. But with so much exciting and scary things on the table, everybody was looking at it and thinking like, Oh, wow, you know, who would be that leader?
So somehow I know. I know I want this job. Because I'm very curious and I'm very creative. I like doing things new that nobody else has figured out. That's part of my superpower. And I also like challenges. And I like to do things that's really new and cool. That excites me. So I think I listen to my intuition and I put myself out there.
And it was really scary in the beginning. Like, yes, even if they choose me, what if I fail? But I also asked myself, what if it works? What if I succeed? So eventually, you know, working through the, all the job application, their interviews process. And eventually I was a selected for that position. And I think I was right. This really, uh, excites me and get the best of myself on this job.
So three years down the road, we already launched a few successful products through the broader collaboration. I'm very proud of what team has accomplished together. And not to mention I was promoted in the middle and also I, you know, keep elevating myself on the leadership journey as well.
And the coaching journey, because the more you do, the more you share, the more power you have and the more people you could support.
[00:23:12] Lauren Burke: That's awesome. Do you feel like seeing how that risk, the something that you felt really nervous about, do you feel like now you approach things you consider risky with a more optimistic mindset?
[00:23:27] Joy Zhao: That's a really interesting, you know, question because risk, taking the risk, there are a lot of techniques. There are a lot of strategies how to take the risk. It's calculated risk because you have to be able to take the consequences of that risk. Right? I think I had a confidence to back me up at then.
I wasn't having the direct experience. Um, I did not have all the knowledge and skills, but I have transferable skills and I know I have been successful in other areas. I could apply a lot of thinking and leadership and the way of doing things. How do I design? How do I come up with the ecosystem? I didn't know exact how I can be successful, but I had this confidence.
So with that confidence, Lauren, I persuaded others and I convinced them and I proved myself that I'm the right person to do this job. So that's a calculated risk. I think the worst scenario, I think for me, I knew the worst scenario, it doesn't work and I might lose my job and I, it's okay. But I wanted to do things I love.
I wanted to give a try. I have this strong pull that the best self is there. I need to go for it.
[00:24:52] Lauren Burke: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it does. It does make sense. It feels like a very data person thing to do to lay out all of the options and try and calculate the reward or the consequence, um, because we do that pretty much day to day. So I think that's a, a really good strategy to keep in mind being open to new things, but also trying to think ahead of what scenarios are your best case, your worst case, and just what you should expect from that.
[00:25:24] Joy Zhao: Yeah. I think everybody has to know they are for the life or where they are for the growth journey. So take the risk they can afford to lose.
[00:25:35] Lauren Burke: That's a great way of putting it. One of the things I also wanted to ask you about was putting yourself out there, which you definitely did when you were seeking out this new role. But in terms of other things, a lot of people are interested in getting into things like public speaking, finding new opportunities, but they don't really know how to get started.
So how did you get started with that? And what tips do you have?
[00:26:01] Joy Zhao: That's a really lovely topic that I'm excited to talk about. So public speaking, my journey started with Toastmaster. Um, that was more than 10 years ago, purely to improve my English. So I heard about this Toastmaster, and then I joined, it was so scary. I know the first, the first exercise we did on the Toastmaster club, we were required to give this uh, five minutes of talk. I stand there and then go on and on and on for 50 minutes. I lost track. I don't remember what I said.
So that's where the public speaking started. Toastmaster helped me so much. It helped me with grammar, the pronunciation. Also trying to, um, manage my filter words. Like so many basic things that help me to get much better on my communication.
So public speaking, the baseline of public speaking is communication, right? So I started off just really trying to get better level of communicating with others. Then, you know, Toastmaster, when you're giving your speech, it's about your story. And the more I do the Toastmaster Talks, I said, like, wow, it gives me so many opportunities to just tell my story to others.
And I, I got to say, I underestimated my story in the past. So the more I start talking, people telling me the feedback, like, Joy, you have to tell more of this. I know so and so need to hear this. And I know so and so would really benefit from it. So over the years, I never stopped telling the story, but really in the smaller scale, you know, in the friend circle, um, with the mentor mentee relationship. I volunteer a lot on those as well.
Then pandemic hit. So nobody was prepared for that. That was a time I actually graduated from the coaching school, and we were asked, Hey, Joy, you know, we think that you can help people. So we start hosting public webinars. I had a doubt even then it's like who wants to hear my story, right? Like I know the friend circle, but to put it out there in the world, to have public webinar, sometime 3, 400 people. All the strangers, like what would they learn from it?
Wow. I underestimate the power of the story, Lauren. I got to say, we started having a couple, then, you know, more people ask for it. In the last three years, we have talked to more than 6,000 people through at least the 35 public webinars as of today. So every time we talk, and when we talk about general things and general guideline, how to manage stress, how to advance your career.
Then we became more like themed topic. You know, how do you improve your confidence? How do you learn the language when English is not your native language? How do you have a difficult conversation? And like a lot of career related topics. So you just get more boost. Every time you talk, you get better. And your story shares with more people.
And even now, actually just yesterday, I was recording on the stage as part of the Emerging Speaker Showcase. So actually yesterday was the first time I put the whole thick skin story in the eight minutes talk. It's like now it's in the universe as a whole story, connecting all of them.
So public speaking for me is a way of sharing. So I can support people better. That was where it came at the first point. And as I was doing that, along the way, I have been getting better at speaking and also connecting with more people. Because people exchange stories with you. Every time you give and a lot of more will give back their story to you.
So I really think that communication is very important for career and all just general life in America, right? How communication is how we can get to know other people. How do we connect? Then we can really build the trust.
[00:30:35] Lauren Burke: Absolutely. The better you can communicate, especially in the tech space, a lot of times what we're talking about with people, non technical people, our stakeholders, are numbers. And no one wants to hear, no one wants you to list off a bunch of raw numbers without being able to understand and explain what those actually mean, and more importantly, what the value of those means.
So effective communication is, is so essential to succeeding in the data space, the tech space in general.
[00:31:07] Joy Zhao: I totally agree. You know, last a couple of years and there are so many talks about being the translator because there are like two major camps. One camp, you know, one camp is a population who are working with the numbers and who are, you know, very smart and doing solutions.
And the other camp is a business like, okay, here's a here's what I need to solve this problem. And I'm looking for the solutions a lot of time. How do these powerful population talking to each other, understand each other, then make the partnership and a collaboration effective. And it's actually very important. And the communication is a key. The storytelling is a key.
[00:31:52] Lauren Burke: Absolutely. I think the people that are the most successful on either of those sides, the business and the technical are the ones that truly, truly understand that everyone has the same goal. And then also understand what that goal looks like to the people on the other side. So you can align as best as possible.
[00:32:11] Joy Zhao: So well said, Lauren.
[00:32:14] Lauren Burke: Thank you. So along with, along with just improving the relationship in general as you are building out more and more effective communication, do you feel like it's changed your executive communication style as you've taken lessons from Toastmasters, public speaking, just how you've observed other people speaking?
[00:32:36] Joy Zhao: Certainly. Executive presence is very important thinking about, um, if you increase your circle of influence because a lot of time you're required to build trust, to gain the reputation really quickly. Right? That executive presence is immediate impression that how other people can trust you.
So, you know, confidence is taking a long time to really build it up. And I have to say confidence is very important. Then if you have your confidence, then how you harness the power of the communication means what to say, when to say, how do you say it with what kind of energy? Right?
A lot of time, you don't have like 10 hours of time. You probably just have 5 minutes or 10 minutes to get your message across, to negotiate, to get approval, to influence in the general way. Then the efficiency and effectiveness of the communication, that's the key.
[00:33:43] Lauren Burke: Absolutely. I think that ties up so many of the things we talked about today so well. And before we end, I want to ask something that I ask every time. So what is a resource that has helped you in your career that you think could help others listening?
[00:33:59] Joy Zhao: I would say there are two recommendations for me. Um, I read a lot of books. As you can imagine, the one Dare to Lead was the one that had a lot of impact on me. That's where, um, when I was at the career hard time, I think the book just speak to my heart at that time. And it spoke to my situation. It helped me to find a lot of strength.
And there are a lot of other books there, but this one is particularly, you know, special to me by Brené Brown.
And, you know, the bigger one, I talk about the transformation through the coaching. A lot of time we can't help ourselves. We have to find the help that's outside of us, right? We couldn't. We don't see what we don't know a lot of time. So coaching is a very effective way to really make changes. So all these years, you know, I went to the coaching school, I learned the energy leadership. I always have my own coaches and I coach other people. I see coaching can be a really worthy investment.
If some of you there are really struggling, seek a coach. Ask for help. Help yourself to get out that, you know, not ideal situation or the tough situation you're in and trust the power of the coaching. So energy leadership actually has a book and it's really in the fiction, um, style, but it kind of lay out the foundation with the energy leadership.
And of course, you know, I will be happy to introduce other coaches for the audience who needs a resource like that. But trust me, coaching will change your world.
[00:35:45] Lauren Burke: That makes a lot of sense the way you describe that. You can benefit a lot from just somebody external to you, whether it's in your close circle or a little bit more distant, being able to share things with you that you probably can't see yourself and could benefit you to either work on or understand or focus on more.
[00:36:08] Joy Zhao: Yeah. Can I add one more thing, Lauren? Um, I talk very often, like all my career, I'm blessed by great leaders. All my leaders throughout my career, we remain to be friends, even we kind of, you know, depart. So I would really say, find the great leaders. It's really important. There's this 3S model.
The first S is spark, like we as an individual, we have this fire in the belly. We have this spark. I want to be great. I want it to be outstanding. I want it to be successful. So that spark is very important, but you want this second S as support.
Support from your leaders, particularly your immediate leaders. That person who work with you every single day, they see your greatness, they support your potential, they invest in you and give you those hard, those constructive feedback.
So point out, you know, if you have a blind spot and they help you to identify them and help you to improve. So a great leader is very important. You know, I, I have my leader, even today's leader that, you know, he's my biggest supporter and helped me play a very important role in my personal growth journey.
And then the third S is structure. The first spark from yourself and support from your leader. And it will be even better. It will be ideal if you work at a company who provide the structure so you can really use all the resource to, you know, maximize your growth. And I think Nationwide is a really great place that helped me. That I have all three in my professional career helping me to develop and help me to succeed.
So find that a great leader and go to a great company, so you can really fulfill your whole growth journey.
[00:38:11] Lauren Burke: That's awesome. That's such a nice way to sum it up to the three S's. I actually haven't heard of that before, so I'm definitely going to be looking that up and trying to figure out how I can apply that. Um, so how else can our listeners keep up with you?
[00:38:25] Joy Zhao: I'm very active on LinkedIn. So, you know, people can always find me on LinkedIn. I will follow up on this post, uh, link to provide my LinkedIn. So connect with me, message me, let me know if there are things I could support you.
[00:38:41] Lauren Burke: Awesome. Yeah, we will absolutely be sharing the episode on LinkedIn and tagging Joy. So if anyone would like to connect with her, follow up on any of the things we talked about today or just learn more about some of the things she's passionate about, we will absolutely make that connection so you can also make that connection.
[00:38:58] Joy Zhao: Thank you, Lauren. I really enjoyed our conversation.
[00:39:02] Lauren Burke: Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate you finally joining us on the podcast and it was so nice to speak with you and learn more about your career journey and some of the things that have worked for you along the way and that hopefully others can apply and find success themselves.
[00:39:22] Joy Zhao: Thank you. I would be happy to support other people.
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