Season 10, Episode 2 - Doug Hague, Executive Director, Corporate Engagement, UNC Charlotte

·29 min·1 clip

Doug Hague predicts generative AI will automate coding, making critical thinking more important.

1. Data Science Perspectives features Bill Franks speaking with Doug Hague about his route from material science and banking into UNC Charlotte's data science work. 2. Doug Hague is the Executive Director of Corporate Engagement at UNC Charlotte, and Bill Franks says Hague also became the first Executive Director of the School of Data Science there. 3. The episode asks how Hague moved from industry to academia and what that path says about analytics, leadership, and the next five years of data science. 4. Hague says there was no field called analytics and data science when he started, so he began as a material scientist after earning a PhD in material science. 5. He describes early work at Pratt & Whitney on jet engines and failure analysis, then at Sprint on internet architecture and infrastructure evolution. 6. Hague says those jobs led into a field of real options and eventually into Bank of America, where he started building analytics teams around business problems. 7. He says banking appealed because a classmate called him and asked whether he would consider it, even though his first reaction was, "why would I want to be a banker?" 8. He says he stayed at Bank of America because he kept getting new jobs every one to two years and was repeatedly sent into areas with "lots of data, but no answers." 9. Hague says his work moved from organizing reporting into predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics, and data science across multiple teams. 10. He and Bill Franks discuss how large companies often have highly mature analytics in one area and weak capabilities in others, including cautious use of analytics in HR. 11. Hague says the breadth of organizations using data science has expanded to nonprofits and smaller companies as bachelor's programs lower the cost of entry. 12. He credits Michael Rappa at NC State as one of the first leaders to build an analytics program and says that early work helped the field stick. 13. Hague says his move to academia came from a life plan he wrote in the early 1990s after reading Stephen Covey's Seven Habits for Highly Effective People. 14. He says he always wanted to return to a university to be a professor from industry because he valued applied teaching more than purely theoretical instruction. 15. Hague says university life taught him patience, consensus building, and the reality that people behave according to their incentives, whether those incentives are tenure, renewal, or research funding. 16. He says data science leadership in universities depends on influence, because faculty have autonomy and different perspectives across philosophy, computer science, electrical engineering, and history. 17. Hague says his two strongest traits are insatiable curiosity and the willingness to listen before judging other people's work. 18. He also says he values feedback and tries to internalize criticism from annual reviews, coaches, team 360s, and student evaluations. 19. The conversation stays conversational and reflective, with Bill Franks drawing parallels from his own analytics and consulting background while Hague gives direct examples from banking and university leadership. 20. People who like applied analytics careers, university leadership, and AI workforce shifts will get the most from this episode; people wanting technical tutorials on Python or machine learning may skip it.

As heard by us

A steady conversation about analytics leadership, academic culture, and the shift from hierarchy to influence.

Data Science Perspectives keeps its focus on analytics careers and the pull between corporate work and academia. Doug Haig's path from Bank of America to UNC Charlotte gives the conversation its spine, especially once the discussion gets to the School of Data Science and the…

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A thoughtful career path chat on analytics leadership, academia, and how influence replaces hierarchy.

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