Alumni Profile: Vidal Anguiano Jr., MSCAPP’19

Vidal Anguiano Jr.’s connection to the University of Chicago began in 2011 when he entered the University of Chicago as a Questbridge Scholar to pursue a degree in public policy.

“My interest in policy is informed by my lived experience as a lower-income, Hispanic male,” Anguiano said, “and Questbridge provided me full financial aid to come to UChicago.”

Anguiano completed his bachelor’s in public policy in 2015 and said his concentration in quantitative methods started him connecting data to policy. “I was able to take courses in quantitative analysis and computational social science, which is where I started learning R and Python. I loved being able to use data analysis and technology to understand public policy issues because it allowed us to go beyond heuristics that fail to reflect statistical reasoning..”

The summer before his senior year of undergrad, Anguiano was a Senior Fellow for the City of New York, working on Mayor de Blasio’s "Pre-K for All" campaign. “I was interested in early childhood education interventions as a way to improve future outcomes, so it was a great opportunity for me. Plus, I received a stipend from the Institute of Politics for the summer, making the opportunity financially viable.” The experience also sparked Anguiano’s interest in how private companies can assist the public sector in implementing policy, and in fall 2015 he joined Accenture Federal Services as a Management Consulting Analyst. “I assisted a federal agency with managing its data inventory. We created data dashboards and developed products that allowed them to utilize their data at a higher capacity.”

After working at Accenture for nearly two years, Anguiano returned to UChicago to begin the Master of Science in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) program. “I saw coming back to Harris as an opportunity to more fully develop the skills I started learning in my undergrad. I also wanted to make a deeper impact here in Chicago.”

Anguiano praised the program’s flexibility: “I took courses across different schools—especially the computer science department—and gained a solid foundation in big data technologies. I was able to take courses on algorithms and large-scale data analysis, skills I use every day in my current work.” He was also actively involved in the Minorities in Public Policy Studies (MIPPS) student group throughout his two years in the program.

Anguiano now works at West Monroe as a senior data science consultant. “I primarily work with a major utility client for a large US city. We are building a data platform that centralizes consumer data and allows them to better serve their clients,” he said. “It’s extremely rewarding to use the algorithm and large-scale data analysis skills I gained at Harris in such a capacity.”