Meet the Founder
Andrew Banasiewicz, PhD
Hello and thank you for visiting. I am Dr. Andrew Banasiewicz and I am the founder of Erudite Analytics; the following is a brief summary of my professional background and personal hobbies; my full professional bio can be found here. You may also enjoy listening to my recent big data / business analytics discussion on New Hampshire's WBNH 105.1 or take a look at a short write-up in a local newspaper.
My Story
Let me begin with a broad self-characterization: I have an undying passion for cerebral and physical fitness - the former manifests itself in my commitment to research, and the latter in my athletic hobbies, captured in a few pics shown here.
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I founded Erudite Analytics in 2013 with the goal of offering independent research & analysis services, focused primarily on statistical estimation of organization-specific exposure to executive, casualty, and other risks. Prior to founding Erudite Analytics I spent nearly two decades with risk management and marketing organizations as a senior-level quantitative analyst specializing in predictive analytics, text mining, and impact measurement as means of data-substantiated decision-making.
During that time I have had the opportunity to work with numerous Fortune 500 organizations spanning a wide range of industries including energy, automotive, financial services, pharmaceuticals, consumer packaged goods, gaming & hospitality, to name just a few. That broad, cross-industry experience not only provided me with numerous opportunities to immerse myself in many different types and sources of data, but has also contributed to shaping of my current decision-making research and risk estimation work.
For instance, the Erudite Analytics' multi-attribute methodologies for estimating the likelihood and severity of company-specific exposure to securities class action litigation can be seen as products of more than a decade of evolutionary data-method-outcome thinking and approach re-engineering; similarly, our current methodology for estimating the likelihood of adverse development of casualty claims can also be seen as a product of a multi-year, cross-industry, improvement-minded analytical re-engineering process.
An important contributor to my applied work is theoretical research, which is focused on developing a sound conceptual foundation for the largely practice-shaped domain of organizational threat assessment. With that goal in mind, my first book, Risk Profiling of Organizations, originally published in 2009, outlines an approach for amalgamating of multi-source and multi-type data into an organization-specific risk profile, while my more recent (2017) work, Threat Exposure Management, details a comprehensive planning and management framework meant to unify the now-distinct disciplines of enterprise risk management, business continuity planning, organizational resilience, and change management under a common planning and management umbrella.
My more recently (2019) published research, Evidence-Based Decision-Making, addresses the more general domain of organizational decision-making and organizational learning. Here, I put forth a conceptual framework, supported by the enabling 'how-to' calculus, for amalgamating the totality of empirical and experiential choice related evidence. I was delighted to learn that my work captured the attention of book critics at Book Authority, who picked it as their #1 Best New Decision Making Book to Read in 2019.
My still more recent research, Organizational Learning in the Age of Data, published in July of 2021, extends the key ideas laid out in Evidence-Based Decision-Making onto broader organizational learning contexts, by tackling notions of human-machine interactions, digital, analytic, and informational literacy, and data-enabled creativity. One of that book's central themes is the interplay between human reasoning and machine logic in the context of organizational functioning, specifically, the fairly common situations in which subjective beliefs are pitted against objective evidence, giving rise to conflict rather than enhancing the quality of organizational sensemaking. Continuing that theme, my current work, tentatively titled Data Analytic Literacy, scheduled to be released on July 24, 2023, takes a much closer look at what is required - knowledge- and skills-wise - to be deemed a competent user of today's rich and varied data resources. And lastly, concurrently I am also working on an in-depth overview of how readily available and informative data can be used to develop more analytically robust benchmarks - I expect that work, tentatively titled Probabilistic Benchmarking: Norm-Setting in the Age of Big Data, to be published in the latter part of 2024.
In addition to my hands-on risk estimation work, I am also the Koch Chair and Professor of Business Analytics at Cambridge College, where I currently serve as the Founding Dean of the School of Business & Technology. Formerly, I served as Professor of Practice and Founding Director of graduate online Data Science & Business Analytics programs at Merrimack College, and Associate Professor of Practice and Director of graduate online Risk Management programs at Boston University. Lastly, I also had the pleasure of guest lecturing at several US, European, Asian, and Australian academic institutions.
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My self-introduction would be incomplete without mentioning my less cerebral interests, which include scuba diving and endurance sports. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience some truly amazing underwater wonders, including Australia's Great Barrier Reef and Hawaii's Lanai 'cathedrals', and the thrill of cage diving with great white sharks off the coast of South Africa; I feel just as fortunate to be able to continue to compete in endurance races, including New York, San Francisco, Hawaii and other marathons, in addition to numerous Ironman 70.3 mile and Ironman 140.6 mile triathlons.
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I thrive on intellectual and physical challenges, I love to explore and experience, and push the boundaries of what can and should be done. There is no clear distinction, in my mind and in my life, between my professional interests and personal hobbies, and my professional journey has been a search for intellectually and experientially rewarding engagements. And so while it may be hard for some to appreciate it, my research interests are not just professional in character, but are in fact deeply personal, in the sense of satisfaction I derive from engaging in analytically creative work.
