In the heat of the 2012 election cycle and as a graduate of the Political Science Department at BYU, Jordan Rogers moved to Washington, D.C. with his family to work for TargetPoint Consulting. TargetPoint is a firm specializing in a wide range of research solutions, from election consulting to corporate advocacy.
There he enjoyed a high level of autonomy and varied portfolio of projects, the perfect combo for a self-proclaimed “data geek”.
“They relied a lot on the new, lower level to do a lot of projects that probably wouldn’t ever go down to that level in a bigger organization. I got to participate in projects that I really enjoyed and what I was doing was going to very influential people,” he said. And during his tenure, Rogers presented directly to prominent leaders in the Republican party, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Republican Party chair Reince Priebus.
This, however, wasn’t Rogers’ favorite part of the job.
“I thought what we did was fascinating, from a data standpoint I’m kind of a data geek. Data analysis is what I do and what I really like.”
And with the quantitative analysis skills he had first begun cultivating at BYU, Rogers decided he wanted his work to cross partisan lines. Somewhat impulsively, he applied for a job in Salt Lake, and then several more, eventually securing another data-heavy position with his current employer, O.C. Tanner.
O.C. Tanner has been popularized as a jeweler, but the vast majority of their business revolves around helping other businesses recognize their employees. Their services range from tenure packages to employee recognition software.
“The reason I decided to go with O.C. Tanner was I really wanted to go somewhere I felt I was making a more positive impact on the world. I felt very passionately that the work I was doing in politics was having a positive impact on people, in some ways good in some ways bad. But now I’m impacting people no matter who you are. You can be any demographic, have any beliefs, and I have the potential to impact you with my work.”
Most recently, Rogers was accepted to Northwestern to complete a masters degree in predictive analytics, which he does online in addition to his full-time job. Ultimately he hopes to bear the title of “data scientist” and to explore different career opportunities that accompany it.
“The thing that I really like about data analysis is it allows you to apply a lot of different types of information. That’s why I can go from politics to employee recognition. It’s applicable across a lot of industries, which is appealing to me. Having a predictive degree where you’re analyzing data allows you to go anywhere.”