Colin Quinn ’24

With his master’s training, “I could see where we had gaps that we needed to fill,” he says. “The master’s program truly equipped me with what I needed to know to be effective in my job.

As a Drexel undergrad, Colin Quin majored in finance. When he came to the end of his co-op experience, he knew he wanted to learn even more: “I enjoyed analyzing data, and I wanted to keep pushing on, to bolster my education."

Quinn’s decision to pursue an MS in Business Analytics at LeBow has paid off in a big way. He interned at Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) during his graduate studies, and has since transitioned to become a full-time business intelligence developer with the utility company.

It’s a very tech-centric role: Quinn works with a small team that develops and implements the analytic tools that help the company make major business decisions.

“There is data analytics software that produces valuable insights so that each department can better their operations,” he says. That covers a broad range of activities, from comparing the actual versus the budgeted amounts for a given project; to developing reliable performance indicators; to building dashboards that help business leaders visualize trends.

What does that look like in practical terms? In one case, a vice president needed to understand how the city was transitioning from gas to renewable-energy sources. That’s a significant driver of business strategy in the energy industry, “but every time he got a document, he had to comb through a 101-page PDF, take the relevant data points and add those into another master sheet appendix,” Quinn says.

“I knew some quicker and more efficient ways of doing that,” he added. His automated solution speeds the processing, easing the workload for leadership while also generating faster business insights.

Colin’s skills in this arena come directly from his LeBow studies. “There was a class on data storytelling that focused on how to use graphs to convey an underlying message,” he says. “Before you even use the numbers, you need to use the symbols correctly, and the examples and exercises in that class really pushed us to understand what to do and what not to do.”

In a experiential-learning course at LeBow, Colin built an AI-driven chatbot. “We had to deliver a finished product at the end of just four days, so we had to digest a lot of things at once,” he says. That high-pressure experience helped prepare him to meet the expectations of a deadline-driven job.

In fact, it was LeBow that got him in the door with PGW in the first place. He met a company representative during a grad-school practice interview day, and that encounter would later help open doors.

“It was one of those opportunities for the employers to talk with students, and to see beyond what was on their resume,” he says. “I had done a variety of different analytics projects at that point and it was hard to capture all that they entailed on a resume. When I was able to verbally explain it to somebody from PGW, I was able to touch on all of them, and I could cherry pick what I felt was relevant to him.”

That practice interview led directly to Colin landing the internship that eventually turned into a full-time job.

PGW offered to transition Colin from intern to full-timer even before he graduated, and he credits LeBow with the win. “Drexel was able to show me how to create value in my department and in my company,” he says.

With his master’s training, “I could see where we had gaps that we needed to fill,” he says. “The master’s program truly equipped me with what I needed to know to be effective in my job.”