Bio
Zeke is a Chicago born and raised single dad of teen twins. His parents were Mexican immigrants who worked hard to give him a solid education. He worked hard to convince them to buy him a computer and started learning to code in the 7th grade. The Logan Square neighborhood he was raised in was always “tough” before he was a teenager. It only got tougher and harder to avoid the various aspects of the city that had no solid future. Fortunately he found that “running” was a sport just in time during HS. The coach observed Zeke – running from trouble and convinced him to join the Cross Country team. Zeke focused on his athleticism and indirectly continued with his hobby of “code”.
Skills
Zeke has shared his technical but also personal journey and adventures with others including speaking and lecturing at University Campuses and Global Technical Conferences. Available speaking topics include:
- Career Related: From resume and interviewing to current trends in data engineering
- SAS Technical Subjects: From introduction to advanced
- CMS VRDC/Medical Data: From complex patient claims to cohort and complex data preparation for advanced AI/ML and statistical studies
Zeke regularly speaks at software peer conferences and has been invited to speak at Regional and International software conferences. He also works with major universities on research and simply helping the next round of graduates to get an idea of what adventures await them.
When he isn’t a consultant for SAS technical projects he is keeping his skills sharp on SASENSEI.
Keynote Projects
-
Banking
Key customer segmentation and insights project. The bank wanted to invest over 70m in the Chicago area. Either by acquiring another smaller bank or simply building their own new branches.
-
Marketing
How the ROI for marketing efforts manifested themselves in responses and results from various channels.
-
Finance
Web click leads analysis and customer lifecycle analytics and reporting.
-
Healthcare Analytics
MS VRDC is a complex realm of national claims for medicare and medicaid patients. Zeke has been working with that specialty vertical since 2013. He regularly consults to teams who need this data on the various ways and systems available which can reduce costs and use resources wisely.
Personal Projects
Zekes Scholarship – Due to CV19 and more people working from home or trying to find work, Zeke has tried to help others by simply buying a class from a trainer who needs to make some sales – and giving that class to a student who needs to learn.
Zeke also helps with local community efforts. Such as using Open City data feeds to map key statistics on maps and assist in other ways to help community leaders elected or otherwise in planning etc.
Zeke also volunteers with other local, regional SAS users groups – but many different types of “volunteer” groups as well.