Maura Anish

Full Name: Maura Anish

Grad Year: ​2025

Degree/Program: ​MS in DACSS

Current Title: Data Analyst

Current Employer: Project HOPE Boston

What is the core mission of your role, or what is a major project you are currently working on? The core mission of my role is to help my organization demonstrate the impact that our programs have on the local community. I facilitate data entry, manage the databases we use to store information about our clients and donors, and use data to report on what Project HOPE has accomplished in a given period of time. I get excited by the prospect of using data to help make the case for why our organization should be awarded the funding that we need to continue offering our critical services. 

How did you find your current position: I had an internship with Project HOPE in the summer of 2022, so when I saw a posting for a Data Analyst on their website 3 years later, I applied right away. My prior experience at the organization and the additional education in the Data Science field that I’d acquired since my internship helped me secure my current role. 

Is there a specific skill, methodology, or lesson from your degree that you rely on to do your work successfully? One of the key lessons that I learned from DACSS which I frequently incorporate into my work is to provide as much context as possible for the numbers or charts that I’m presenting. In order to avoid misinterpretation and guide audiences towards the conclusions that I want them to take away from a presentation, I strive to be particular about the words I use to describe results. Clearly stating how a statistic was calculated, what exactly it measures, and what it means for our organization help me convey accurate and useful information about our impact.

Looking back, what was a pivotal moment, favorite class, or faculty mentorship during your time in the program that directly shaped how you approach your career today? The lessons that I learned from DACSS 604: Advanced Data-Driven Storytelling heavily shape my approach to my daily work. In my role, it’s almost always the case that the audiences of my reports do not have backgrounds in statistics or data science. Therefore, having the ability to translate my technical work into meaningful, actionable results for their roles is crucial, and DACSS 604 provided me with the tools I needed in order to do that.

If you could give one piece of advice to a student who is on the fence about starting the MS in DACSS, what would it be? If I could give one piece of advice to a student who is considering starting the MS in DACSS, I would tell them that, if they’re looking for a program which places an equal emphasis on technical skills and the socially-conscious ethics that should accompany those skills, then they’ve found the right program for them!