Gabriel Burt works to create social impact. For that reason, he joined the Obama campaign back in 2011 where he led a team of nine analytic engineers, working on 50TB analytics database. Since, he took his experience to Civis Analytics - a technology firm that solves the worlds problems with Big Data.
When he's not working on changing the world, you might find Gabriel flying a plane (he's a certified pilot) or biking along Lake Shore Drive with his wife.
How did your role with the Obama campaign prepare you for your spot at Civis Analytics?
I joined the Obama campaign and Civis for the same reason: I wanted to do work that had tremendous social impact.
In 2012, I co-led the Analytics Tech team on the Obama campaign. We built tools that enabled analysts across the campaign to make integrated use of the campaign's data. Our task was to make the arduous easy and the impossible doable. That very tight collaboration between our tech team and users is something we've carried over to Civis, whether users are our data scientists or clients like Ethical Electric.
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How does technology power your business? What technologies are playing the biggest roles in Civis Analytics this year? What are the biggest tech projects your team is working on this year?
Technology is the cornerstone to democratizing analytics, and our use of AWS products (including Redshift) has helped us bring scalable analytics technology to a diverse client base, from non-profits to political committees. We're building products and solutions that haven't existed for our clients before, and excited to see what amazing new things they do with our data science tools.
Day-to-day, we are pragmatists making good use of Rails, Go and Python.
What trends do you see happening in data analytics over the next three years? How is Civis Analytics anticipating those trends and working towards them already?
We think of the work we do as people science. It's a shift from treating people as groups to treating them as individuals. Our technology empowers clients to make that philosophical leap. An example is our media optimizer, a tool we pioneered on the campaign and have since rethought here at Civis.
Was there a specific point in time that you got validation and realized that what your team is providing is valuable for companies and non-profits? What feedback have you gotten from these groups?
Definitely! On the campaign, our analytics tech team used to get love letters from state data staff. We've had clients at Civis ask us to promise to never take our tools away. We won't.
On a personal level, I took a leave of absence from Civis for two months to work on the fix of healthcare.gov and it's been extremely validating to see millions of people sign-up.
What else do you want the Chicago startup community to know about Civis Analytics's tech?
Our tech team is growing fast, and focused on building products. We are makers, doers, and builders...and we really mean what we say on our apply page: we're smart, fun and a little bit weird. And we're always looking for (and hiring) smart, excited engineers, data scientists, and analysts.
View 5 Chicago CTOs You Should Know, Part 1 Here
View 5 Chicago CTOs You Should Know, Part 2 Here
