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Current Job: Data scientist at Spatial.ai, a geosocial data company that analyzes geotagged social media posts in different areas of the country to help with demographic research. As one of two data scientists with the company, Gilbert analyzes the data sets for Spatia.ai’s clients.

Degree: Gilbert earned a bachelor’s degree in data analytics, graduating in December 2019.

How Ohio State prepared her: Gilbert left her hometown of Chicago to come to Ohio State because of the data analytics major. Once here, she became fully entrenched in the technology community in both the university and the city of Columbus. For instance, she helped organize the Women in Analytics Conference, participated in hack events like HackOHI/O and served as a Data Analytics Path Peer and a member of  the leadership team for the Big Data and Analytics Association. In 2018, Gilbert also founded DataI/O, a one day data science hackathon co-hosted by the Big Data and Analytics Association and the OHI/O program, which just had its third annual event in October 2020. 

She said involvement and making connections gave her a community of support at Ohio State and now has become valuable for her career.

“It’s important for students to have that community involvement and make valuable connections,” Gilbert says. “I came to Ohio State specifically for the data analytics major and I ended up in Cincinnati because of the connections from Ohio State.”

 Jack Schroder ’18, a former president of the Big Data and Analytics Association student organization, was one of those connections. Schroder helped Gilbert get hired at Spatial.ai and has been a mentor in bringing her up to speed.

Final thought: “It’s important to be well-balanced and embrace opportunities that make your college experience what you want it to be. At a large university like Ohio State, you have a lot of chances to do exactly that. If you focus your time at Ohio State, you can get really valuable academic experiences and learn a lot from professors if you engage them. You can get really valuable opportunities and hands-on projects outside the classroom. That’s what prepared me for internships and job opportunities.”