Meet Kristie Savage, a data scientist with a passion: to increase the number of women in non-traditional science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers. In this episode of The Nine Oh Six, Kristie reflects on her journey off-the-beaten-path to find her dream job, including life lessons moving from Michigan to New York City, how she stays off social media, and her passion for mentorship.

TRANSCRIPT: Episode 2 - A Trailblazer in Data Science

[0:00] 

Kristie: Data Science in general is a new field. To have it as a career, it's completely new. To work for an audio streaming company that was not founded when I was in middle school, completely new. What I want to do is let people at a young age know that they don't have to be an engineer who builds bridges.

 [0:20]

Meha: You're listening to Kristie Savage. Welcome to The Nine Oh Six. I am Meha Chiraya.

 [0:27] 

Archita: I am Archita Fritz.

 [0:29] 

Meha: And we're your co-hosts on The Nine Oh Six - a global podcast where every season we interview and take a peek into the lives of nine women from within our own communities to really understand how they have defined success on their own terms.

The Nine Oh Six is where our friendship began, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Today I'm very excited to welcome our next guest, my dear friend Kristie Savage.

 [0:55]

Archita: Kristie is a data driven researcher with a passion for storytelling with numbers, and her career has taken her from Nashville to New York. She's worked the energy sector, for a record label and music technology and now works for Spotify. She's a data scientist there. But at the heart of it, she's really focused on furthering women in STEM by inspiring the next generation of pioneers. We're really excited to deconstruct what success looks like with Kristie Savage on The Nine Oh Six.

 [1:30]

Meha: Kristie Savage, thank you so much for coming all the way over here to Los Angeles, right, my home my podcast studio right outside of Los Angeles all the way from New York City. When did I start calling you Savage? Kristie Savage.

 [1:44]

Kristie: It'd had to have been when we first met, freshman year. This natural evolution.

 [1:49]

Meha: Yeah. You've just been Savage since then in my phone, in my life. Okay, so Savage. Tell us about what shaped before you got to New York, like your roots in Michigan.

 [2:03]

Kristie: So my origins are in Michigan, as you can tell by my awesome Midwestern accent.

 [2:07]

Meha: Yeah you definitely don't have a New York accent. Yeah, yes.

 [2:10]

Kristie: And that is where I met me Meha at the University of Michigan.

 [2:13]

Meha: Go Blue!

 [2:14]

Kristie: Go Blue! We both roomed randomly freshman year. That already put us in a slightly same mentality to say, I'm just gonna go to college and not with anyone I know and try something new.

 [2:28]

Meha: I've never thought about it that way Kristie Savage, that we connected because we were both open to the newness of college.

 [2:36]

Kristie: Yeah

 [2:36]

Meha: You need some new experiences. I knew people from the UP that are going to Michigan, you knew people, new two people from the UP. That's the total population and you knew people from down the street in Dearborn. Yet, I feel like freshmen year, we just decided to expand our social circle.

 [2:55]

Kristie: I think it was lucky that we're both also female engineers. So there's a little bit of randomness in this, a little bit of luck, and then

[3:02]

Meha: We joined SWE together, Society of Women Engineers.

 [3:03]

Kristie: We did join the Society of Women Engineers together. Meha was definitely more driven freshman year, and I think had ambitions that I couldn't even fathom. But I won either a water bottle or a towel, a water bottle from SWE. And so I stuck with it.

[3:26]

Meha: I remember that, it was like a raffle.

[3:30]

Kristie: This seems great. I'll show up again.

[3:32]

Meha: It's interesting hearing you say that Savage that I had ambition then.

 [3:38]

Kristie: Because I have always viewed myself as in the ocean just like drifting along happening to do well and land on my feet, and if I'm not on my feet, I'll just keep drifting until I circle right side up. So you're like charging forward on dry land.

 [3:53]

Meha: I'm glad that you viewed me as so inspirational. So, did you feel you were drifting in college?

Kristie: Drifting is such a weird word because it sounds like you don't have a purpose and you don't know where you're going. I have vague notions of where I want to be.

Meha: Yeah.

Kristie: But I also don't want to confine myself and say, This is the only thing that I can be.

Meha: Okay then. So tell us about your journey Savage to how you drifted along to where you are today.

 [4:22]

Kristie: It's been a long journey to get to a stable career at a company that I love and support in a job function that I'm really passionate about. None of those things, none of those things came straight out of the gate. Yeah, the start of my career was in the oil industry. I just wasn't passionate about the work. And I also wasn't passionate about the schoolwork involved in chemical engineering. I knew I liked math. I knew I liked science. People told me to become an engineer. So I did. There are so many different kinds of engineering. I chose one that I just wasn't that passionate about. Fast forward the next internship that I wanted to do. I applied for an internship at Fallout Boys Vanity record label, Decaydance. So I went straight from oil to a record label. And I applied, and I didn't get it. But because I am obsessed with music, I knew that I'm passionate about this. And this is just where I want to be in this moment. I worked all summer, took a class at college, so I could continue on making sure I'm still on track to graduate and then took an internship actually in the fall semester. So a little off schedule from everyone else, but it worked in my favor, less people I think applied for the internship, and it worked. The stuff I was doing was not engineering related whatsoever. So I completely see why they were hesitant to hire me. Most of what I was doing was creative. I made a couple lyric music videos. I did a lot have other random stuff to promote artists by building web pages helping with their tour schedules, anything that was not related to an oil refinery.

 [6:10]

Meha: Crazy and remind me, that was an unpaid job?

[6:14]

Kristie: It was an unpaid internship in New York City.

[6:17]

Meha: How did you survive? How did you survive those months?

[6:22]

Kristie: So luckily, I saved up a lot of money coming from my college career at the University of Michigan. I'd heard New York was really expensive. So I said, why don't I save 1.5 x my monthly rent currently to make sure that I can afford New York and in Michigan, I was paying about like $250 of rent. So for New York, I figured I would be able to survive on $400, $300

[6:53]

Meha: Oh my god.

[6:54]

Kristie: Wildly inaccurate, wildly inaccurate. I could have, I should have done a little research on Craigslist, this was before a lot of housing apps and I did find all the places that I would live on Craigslist.

[7:06]

Meha: Okay, so let's put it this way. So you seem to be financially savvy, right? You budgeted x amount of money.

[7:13]

Kristie: And then I spent it all my first month on rent. I ran out very quickly. It's New York. Yeah, it was not easy. It was not easy, but you just pick yourself back up. I'm gonna go with the punches type person. So everything that fell through or didn't work out, I still showed up to work, acting like nothing was wrong. And every night we try to figure out what New York City is. And why is it the way it is.

[7:42]

Meha: So what made you keep going? Why didn't you leave? Some people are like, okay, New York is the dream that is not working out. I'm going back home to Michigan.

[7:50]

Kristie: And it did work out for everything that didn't work out, there's always one step where it did. So in the end, I finished the internship, I got thanked on an album from one of my favorite artists, so I think in the end, everything still worked out.

[8:06]

Meha: That's a feeling of success.

[8:08]

Kristie: It's in my apartment, I'm not gonna lie.

[8:10]

Meha: That's awesome.

[8:12]

Kristie: From the record label, I realized, though I'm still super passionate about being in engineering, math. This is my entire life that I've been studying. I can't just jump to a creative field, because I was also pretty bad at it. I'm not meant to be a creative person. So how can I make sure I try to combine the two. So I actually really care about my work. I believe in it, but it's still something I'm good at.

[8:12]

Meha: So then today, Savage, you're a data scientist at Spotify. Tell us more about that.

[8:42]

Kristie: Data Science for those of you who don't know deals with big data, behavioral data, anything that you can log on to Spotify app with their actions that people might take, but how far does that get you if you want to understand mental models such as If I launch a new product, are people understanding it? Are they aware of it? Do they have any confusion? That's not something that data can show. And so I work with my counterpart, a user researcher, who actually has attitudinal behavior. She gets her data in a different form. So she actually talked to a small group of users really understand their mentality about how and why they're using certain products and certain features. And so the talk I gave most recently spoke about how the data said one thing that the users said another, dun dun dun, so we had some conflicting opinions and conflicting data and how do we reconcile that. It came with working together with collaboration, but really combining and using mixed methods research.

[9:50]

Meha: How did you think things have evolved in the past 10 years when it comes to women engineering and now, you know, you're a trailblazer for women in technology?

[10:00]

Kristie: I think it's evolved over more than just 10 years ago over, let's say 30 years ago, I've always luckily had both my mom and my sister as role models in the engineering community, so two females, but if I compare stories that my mom said about college versus now, completely different, completely different, so it is getting better. And it probably wasn't until after college that I started to see, hey, most of the engineering colleagues are male, but most of our applications even at some other companies are all male. So we're not even getting enough females applying to these tech positions. Something is happening where people are dropping out as they progress through their school as they progress through their career. One of the things I'm doing I think is a solution. I joined this group. It's called the IF/THEN ambassador program, and it's supporting Middle School females interested in STEM. Data science in general is a new field. That's one of the things I've been trying to hone in on and explain to the event ambassador program they were asking about what type of career days did you see as a kid in middle school? And how did that affect and shape who you are? Do you think your field is represented? No data sciences in statistics and data visualization is old. Machine learning in a regular sense is old. But to have it as a career, that's now like thousands of people. It's completely new to work for an audio streaming company that was not founded when I was in middle school, completely new. So I think that's also what I want to do with the program, the IF/THEN ambassador program is let people at a young age know that they don't have to be an engineer who builds bridges. There are also so many other new fields that are going to be created that you can't even think about right now. So how do you encourage that entrepreneurship? How do you encourage that creative thinking? So that it's just finding out what you're passionate, about how to make the world a better place, and then do it. Even if no one else has done it before you're going to be the one to do it. How do you do it?

[12:19]

Meha: So Savage, sounds like mentoring and giving back to young people is a key priority for you. But what about you? What about people in your life that you consider mentors?

[12:29]

Kristie: Who are the mentors I've had in my life? One is Meha. You are my number one person that I go to for career advice, because I think that I have found someone, even though we're all completely different career paths. You have a like minded mindset of how to ask for help, how to give presentations, how to get the right group of people in a room and make it a productive thing. So if I'm stuck, I like going to someone who has a similar mindset and who I can be completely totally honest with and not have to put on a show, be on my A-game. First of all mentoring I've always been a big fan of it. I don't think I understood it when I first was in my first career. I just didn't understand what asking someone, either two years older than me or 10 years older than me or 30 years older than me in their career, what would they offer me? I was just trying to survive day to day and do my day to day work. It took me a while to realize that I like being a mentor. And now that I understand what a mentor can provide, I understand also what a mentee can provide and what they should be asking. This is actually one of the the first company I've worked for where I also really feel like we have a really good, strong female presence in leadership positions. That has been very, very helpful. And as I become more and more aware about what makes a good leader and who I want to be, it's easy to pick out the types of people who I see similarities with and can kind of model myself after. So I think there's a lot of people that I turned to for varying degrees of advice. The higher up they are, obviously I'm not going to ask them for help on a day to day work. But I can at least ask them what steps they took in the next 10 years to get where they are.

 [14:22]

Meha: So we're talking about women in leadership positions, Savage. And we know that success comes in so different ways. So how do you define success in your life today?

 [14:32]

Kristie: My success does come from internal happiness. I think I have a drive that is probably different than a lot of other people's but I know what I want. I know where I want to be. I have a five year plan and I want to get there. There are other degrees of success, like you could already be successful and just want to coast and that's also perfect. Or you could have a drive to find a different career path,but need to find the means to get to that other place. But I think my definition of success is that I have my plan and working towards it and I think I'm taking steps there. If I don't reach my five year plan in five years, that's okay. I think it's always good to reevaluate, but have these aspirational goals.

 [15:20]

Meha: So the topic of passion Savage. So what advice would you give to someone at any stage of their life? Who's still trying to figure out what that is? Or how to apply that to their work?

[15:32]

Kristie: That's such a good question. I actually know someone and have I've had some pretty in depth conversations, where they're not passionate about, as they say, anything. And so they're still trying to figure out what is their career path if that's my main ideas for them. I'm just like, oh, find your passion and run with it. You know, that type of adage. It doesn't work for everybody because it could be something unattainable or it could be something that you don't know to verbalize or isn't an actual field where you can make a profitable, happy living. And I think that's really hard. But I think taking stepping stones to where you want to get to, is a way to do it. And by stepping stones, I mean, it'll be different for everything. But again, I am passionate about music. That doesn't mean I have to go down the direct route of being a musician took piano forever and can't even play chopsticks. But at the same time now I'm a data scientist for music company, someone who is tangentially related to something where I feel passionate to work for.

[16:37]

Meha: So I was gonna ask, actually, do you feel that you're applying your passion to what you currently do today?

[16:43]

Kristie: I luckily I have that double whammy. I love data science. I love math. I love stats. This is exactly what I want to do. And I love doing it for musicians for supporting artists who are still trying to make it. People actually have that talent that I wish I had. So I love that I'm able to apply both aspects of my field as my passion. But I completely understand and sympathize with that that can't happen for everybody. Getting as close as you can to something that you believe in, I think will make your work easier for you when you care about it.

[17:17]

Meha: Well said, so. Okay, so in addition to your career, in addition to supporting women in STEM, I know you have a personal life.

[17:27]

Kristie: Yeah, okay. I also have a boyfriend and we should mention him. But one of the reasons why he's also so great is that I can still have this crazy life where I'm German at work, I'm trying to take classes, I'm trying to do 27 new sports, and he's still very supportive of that. And so he knows that there are going to be some nights for me that are later than others. But I do always try to make time at least on weekends, we have date nights we have he doesn't prefer it this way, but I calendar schedule everything. I love, that's the only way I think for me to keep track of everything and make sure I don't double book, make sure I don't forget anything. Dinner is only two hours on the calendar, if it runs late we have to wrap it up, because I'm going back home to study.

[18:18]

Meha: But see it's funny because I think of you as someone who's also very spontaneous. How do you balance being spontaneous, but having this insane schedule like I would never know that this is your secret to success.

[18:30]

Kristie: The thing about calendar apps, all calendar apps, any chunk of time is movable.

[18:37]

Meha:  You're so flexible.

[18:39]

Kristie: It doesn't seem like I'm the type of person that would do this. I think it helps especially like as my career grows as well and I have so many projects to juggle. It is so easy to waste a half hour online, on social media, on news that just limiting my time there because I know I have to start this thing at 930, a lot better for me to be efficient.

[19:02]

Meha: I know that's something you and I have talked about, about getting sucked into social media. And I feel like the problem keeps getting worse every day. How do you not get sucked into social media?

[19:11]

Kristie: So yeah, this is maybe a PSA in general. But the more that I work in tech, the more that I truly believe, we have an issue with data collection, and data privacy. So specifically, American companies, we don't have the same regulations, nor care, for data privacy really makes me concerned. So I've given up a lot of social media sites that I don't think are doing good for the world.

[19:38]

Meha: So then how are ways that you stay connected with people?

[19:42]

Kristie: There is this one thing called face-to-face interaction.

[19:46] 

Meha: Thank you for showing up to California.

[19:50]

Kristie: No it's huge. So in New York, I have something called pizza club. I'll invite people I haven't seen in a really long time like less than 10 to come hang out. I want to try a random pizza joint that I heard was good and get different people who have never met each other all together. The only thing they have in common is that I haven't seen them in a while. I need to be efficient with my time. And I would like to hang out with them. And it works. All my friends are good people, they all get along. So some friendships have been formed, which I'm really happy about. I'm a big fan of the face-to-face interaction. I think that means the world.

[20:27]

Meha: That's brilliant.

[20:35]

Kristie: And I love pizza, so.

[20:37]

Meha: So what advice would you give to someone that maybe earlier in their careers, and they want to take the leap they want to be in a big you know, hustling bustling city like New York City? So what would you say to someone?

[20:50]

Kristie: That you're going to have to hustle and bustle as well. Nothing really comes easy. You got to work for everything. I think if you look in the right spots, you're always going to land on your feet, but you got to be looking. If you're not completely comfortable in a situation or you don't think it's going to work out, just keep your eyes open.

Meha: Alrighty Savage, any final words of wisdom?

Kristie: My mindset is always again, to be driven and to surround myself by the best people. But there's 100 different ways that you can do it. So you got to do the one that fits best for you. I know we spoke a lot about work and a little bit about some extracurricular activities that basically are still work. But you have to have work life balance, and you have to be happy all the hours of the week, not just 40 of them. So I think that's all I ever try to do.

[21:42]

Meha: Thanks Kristie Savage.

[21:43]

Kristie: Thanks, Meha.

[21:44]

Meha: Go Blue!

[21:45] 

Kristie: Go Blue!

[21:45]

Meha: To learn more about our podcast, check us out at thenineohsix.com. The Nine Oh Six is produced by Meha Chiraya and Archita Fritz. Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform to tune in and hear stories that will elevate and inspire you.