Chris Swenson: Resume

Chris Swenson

Natural leader in analytics and data science with over 10 years of experience, collaborating with C-suite executives, mentoring junior colleagues, and contributing with expertise in statistics, machine learning, AI, and reporting tools.
Significant achievements in saving time for people and processes, maximizing the accuracy of forecasts, improving record matching between systems, and assessing the efficacy of interventions and marketing campaigns.
Proven leadership demonstrated in various roles: Product Owner for the data science team, leader of the Neurodivergent Support Group, mentor for junior colleagues, collaborator and presenter to C-suite executives, supervisor for sales analytics, and HEDIS Data Project Manager.
Master’s degree in Applied Statistics, certifications in machine learning, leadership training, and bachelor’s degree in psychology with a focus on research, statistics, math, and science.

Links: Printable Resume | LinkedIn Profile

Experience

Data Scientist 3 (Mar 2021 – Jul 2025)

Promega, Fitchburg, Wisconsin, United States

Statistical modeling, machine learning, and forecasting.

Saved over 80 hours per week for sales team by leading a cross-functional team to leverage LLM email summarization, delivering results within a customized ChatGPT AI agent
Improved customer matching from 48.6% to 83.8% on $1.25 billion of transactions and reduced runtime from 2 hours to less than 20 minutes per day, using T-SQL and SSIS, providing insights on customers for sales, marketing, and finance teams
Reduced daily runtime by 83% for data used in Power BI reports by optimizing text-search workflows, using SSIS, SQL Server Full-Text Index, and dynamic T-SQL in stored procedures
Maximized accuracy to 93.6% in forecasts of over 370,000 financial categories, leveraging simple linear regression using T-SQL in SQL Server and later Python and SQL in Azure Databricks
Identified £30,000 or more in potential savings by evaluating an annual promotional campaign with propensity score matching an analysis of variance using SQL and Python
Managed data products as product owner, assessing requests and priorities, delegating tasks, and project management - serving various teams at a biotechnology manufacturing company
Won the Building Connection Award for establishing and leading the Neurodivergent Support Group

Data Scientist (Apr 2020 – Feb 2021)

SSM Health, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Data modeling, forecasting, and reporting on COVID-19 for leadership.

Maximized forecast accuracy to 99.8% for COVID-19 hospital admissions through redesign, validation, tuning, feature engineering, and performance tracking with SQL, R, and STAN
Maintained 99.7% uptime on automated COVID-19 data model used in forecasting for internal customers and reporting to government officials, maintained in SQL, SSIS, and Python
Identified 847 high-risk patients for targeted treatment outreach with an imbalanced risk model in R, collaborating with nurses and EMR experts, enabling prioritized care allocation
Provided timely, key metrics to supply chain and procurement colleagues, estimating personal protective equipment usage for COVID-19 hospitalizations

Senior Healthcare Analyst (Sep 2017 – Apr 2020)

SSM Health, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Statistical analyses on EMR and health insurance claims data.

Demonstrated a decrease of 7 BMI points with $0 increase in costs for patients in a weight-loss program using observational analyses in SAS, including causal factors and custom features
Attained 40% increase in predictive model accuracy by adding social determinants of health via feature engineering using electronic medical records and health insurance claims in SAS

Data Analyst Consultant (Jul 2017 – Sep 2017)

Great Wolf Resorts, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Consulted with Great Wolf on an analytical project.

Matched $13 million of credit-card transactions to reservations, consolidating disparate records for reconciliation, revenue attribution, and customer engagement insights

Senior Lead Informatics Analyst (Jun 2014 – Jun 2017)

Health Data & Management Solutions, Chicago, Illinois, United States

ETL, report, and analytics developer for a business intelligence tool.

Saved several hours per week in processing time of massive external data ETL in SAS
Recommended cost-reduction actions based on analytical identification of low-value services
Communicated complex analyses and algorithms to internal staff and customers

Data Scientist - Sales Analytics Supervisor (May 2012 – Jun 2014)

Healthgrades, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Analyzed website, call center, and medical encounter activity data.

Supervised two data analysts supporting sales analytics for customers by instituting standard reports, peer review, and mentoring - progressing from oversight to independence
Demonstrated customer ROI through complex analysis of website, call center, and electronic medical records; strengthened the analysis by challenging and updating assumptions
Recipient of the Pizza Day Award for improvements on the market configuration tool, reducing configuration time for analysts and improving customer satisfaction, built with SQL and Python

Programmer Analyst (Jul 2011 – May 2012)

UW Health, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Data architect and EMR ETL developer for research data model.

Automated and simplified ETL and improved patient medical-home assignment logic, reducing errors and maintenance (SAS)
Delivered cleaned, validated datasets to researchers, accelerating studies on complex medical topics and improving reproducibility (SAS)

Clinical Data Analyst (Jul 2010 – Jul 2011)

UW Health, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Analyzed medical record data on patient quality measures.

Automated and simplified ETL and improved patient medical-home assignment logic, reducing errors and maintenance
Delivered cleaned, validated datasets to researchers, accelerating studies on complex medical topics and improving reproducibility

Health Care Analyst II - HEDIS Data Project Manager (Sep 2008 – Jul 2010)

Dean Health Plan, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Provided analytical insight on medical claims data.

Automated pay-for-performance reporting by capturing user requirements and building repeatable workflows, reducing manual effort
Recovered and cleaned historical quality-measure data for warehousing and reporting, enabling longitudinal performance analysis

Researcher (Sep 2005 – Jul 2008)

Renaissance Learning, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Demonstrated product efficacy by measuring improvements on standardized tests and validating results
Communicated research findings to teachers and administrators, translating insights into actionable recommendations

Education

Master's Degree in Applied Statistics (Sep 2020 – Dec 2024)

Pennsylvania State University, World Campus (Online), United States

Coursework: Regression, Experiments, Epidemiology, Machine Learning, Mulitvariate, Time Series
Programming Languages: Python, R, SAS

Bachelor's Degree in Psychology (Sep 2000 – May 2005)

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, Wisconsin, United States

Graduated with Honors and Summa Cum Laude
Psychology: Statistics, Research Methods, Independent Study, Honors Thesis
Additional coursework in mathematics and science
Thesis Title: Academic Performance and Study Behaviors of Traditional and Non-traditional Aged College Students
Cofounded and lead the Whitewater United for Peace student organization

Training

PitchLab from Manitoba Start and New Media Manitoba (2026)
Manager Boot Camp from Wisconsin School of Business (2022)
Certificate in Machine Learning (Python) from Enthought (2020)
Certificate in Machine Learning (Octave) from Stanford University (2013)

Skills

Programming Languages: Python, R, SQL/T-SQL, SAS, Bash, Git
Data Visualization: Power BI, Python, R, SAS, Excel
Data Environments: Azure, Databricks, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Spark, Oracle, SQLite
Data Engineering: ETL, data wrangling, pipeline automation, data quality assessment
Statistical Methods: Time-series forecasting, A/B testing, causal inference, experimental design, analysis of variance, linear and logistic regression, predictive modeling
Machine Learning: Supervised models (trees, ensembles, SVM, neural nets), clustering, simulations, NLP and LLMs, cross-validation, model metrics
Platforms & Developer Tools: JupyterLab, VS Code, RStudio, MLOps, CI/CD for ML, monitoring performance metrics, model versioning, model serving

Volunteer Work

Technical Support Volunteer (Nov 2025 – Dec 2025)

Golden Rule Seniors Resource Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

I helped seniors with technical issues on their phones and laptops.

Founder and Lead of the Neurodivergent Support Group (Feb 2023 – Jul 2025)

Promega, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Founded the support group for parents of neurodivergent children and neurodivergent employees
Group lead: scheduled meetings, set agendas, led discussions, and administered chat group

Foster Parent (Oct 2012 – Mar 2014)

Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Cared for an infant foster child

Awards and Honors

Building Connections (2023)

"This award for Building Connection recognizes your commitment to uniting groups within the company to improve relationships, reduce conflict, and ensure that everyone's voices are heard and validated." I won this award for my efforts with the neurodivergent support group, along with two others, one of whom supported me in setting up and running the support group.

Pizza Day Award (2014)

Recipient of the Pizza Day Award for improvements on the market configuration tool, reducing configuration time for analysts and improving customer satisfaction, built with SQL and Python