From a young age, Rochelle naturally had an inherent sense of curiosity. Her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Dyer, even awarded her with the “Most Curious” award. She has owned that title and her insatiable thirst to be a lifelong learner ever since. 

It has been a full-circle journey toward a career in STEM. Rochelle first discovered her aptitude in math during middle school. She was even invited to attend an annual conference held at Willamette University called, “Expanding Your Horizon”. This conference was created to encourage young girls to pursue education and careers within the STEM fields. At the time she was still more interested in becoming a Broadway actress, singer, or WNBA player. 

Since then she has still maintained an interest in tech, math, and data. But, she didn’t find her true calling until she discovered the field of Data Science. The most valuable part of starting a business from scratch, running and maintaining it was learning not only what she was good at, but also what she enjoyed. Unbeknownst to her, she was beginning to teach herself the fundamentals of data analysis and data science by “geeking out” over the raw data in her restaurant’s cloud-based services. When she finally made the connection and discovered that she could forge a whole career from her favorite business task, it was a no-brainer. 

“As a business owner and decision maker it is so important to know what is actually going on instead of only using intuition. There are times the data will actually surprise you. Making informed decisions is key, and you can achieve that with data.” - Rochelle Rafn

In her studies at the Fortune-ranked Data Science Masters program at Willamette University, she learned not only hard skills like coding but also skills of ethics and integrity. She learned that data can easily be manipulated and algorithms and machine learning are often built with the biases of the humans that create them. This is extremely important to understand when analyzing data for important decision-making, or regarding things like diversity, equity, and inclusion. For this reason, Rochelle has become passionate about making sure that she uses her skills for the good. Be thorough, keep the integrity of the truth, and watch for areas where diversity, equity, and inclusion are important. 

In the future Rochelle is eager to help other businesses learn how to integrate data analysis and informed decision-making into their business operations. In her free time, she is also excited to volunteer in leadership roles for multiple local non-profit organizations, travel, spend time outdoors, sing and play her violin.