Season 6, Episode 3 - Frances Boykin, Director, Advanced Analytics, AT&T

·29 min·1 clip

This series focuses on analytics and data science professionals from across industry to learn about

Bill Franks opens by introducing Frances Boykin of AT&T and framing her as someone whose career has moved across several areas of analytics and business functions. He notes that he first met her years earlier at Teradata meetings and has seen her at Atlanta-area events, including talks where she was a speaker. Boykin began at AT&T nearly 20 years ago as an associate in the IT project management group. From there, she spent about seven years in data science, then worked in marketing compliance and consumer marketing, before spending five years on the global supply chain analytics team. Since 2019, she has been in the customer research and analytics team, where she is now a director over advanced analytics. The conversation uses that path to show how analytics careers often grow by moving through different settings. Franks points out that she has finished one master's degree, earned a doctorate, and is currently finishing a second master's. Boykin gives a practical explanation of why she keeps learning and how education has been part of her approach from the start. She says her computer information systems background gave her a foundation in how computers capture, manufacture, pull together, and store data. Her later degrees helped her use that base to build strong business cases and carry out business strategies. She also credits her project management certification with helping her plan, design, and execute work across her career. When the conversation turns to global supply chain, Boykin says she saw far more data there than she had in marketing and describes it as a place with tons of opportunity. The final stretch turns to AI, where Boykin argues that the tools will not eliminate people so much as help them build more things to work on. She sees the technology as additive and expects it to increase the need for people working on these kinds of projects. Franks closes by thanking her for the conversation and noting that this was her first podcast. The result is a career-focused discussion about learning, execution, and the practical value of analytics.

As heard by us

A grounded look at how an analytics career can grow through education, scope, and steady reinvention.

Frances Boykin's path reads as a steady career map, moving from an early IT project management role at AT&T into data science, marketing compliance, consumer marketing, global supply chain analytics, and, since 2019, customer research and analytics.

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Why you'd press play

A calm career interview about how an analytics career can grow across roles, degrees, and scale.

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