About

Work

Hello! My name is Maddie Pickens. I’m currently a data analyst at the Library of Congress, where I provide ad hoc and automated data analysis to support a team of budget and payroll analysts. In my past life, I was a senior data scientist at the Urban Institute and a data analyst at the Universal Service Administrative Company. I mostly work with Tableau, SQL, and Microsoft products (Excel, Access, Power Query) these days, but I love R and Quarto for facilitating open-source data commmunication.

I believe very strongly that advanced data insights mean nothing if they can’t be conveyed to the audiences who matter. I was very excited to put this philosophy into action when I taught Data Visualization for Data Science to graduate students in the M.S. Data Science for Public Policy program at the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy, where I also got my Master’s degree. I’ve also had the opportunity to teach beginning R and data visualization students through the McCourt Data Visualization elective. I’m looking forward to exploring the intersection of education, data communication, and the open-source data science community even more in the future.

Fun

I love reading anything and everything, from fantasy novels to autobiographies to, yes, technical discussions of data analysis software and code. (I balance this out by also watching way too much reality TV). I’ve recently been dabbling in very bad watercolor and very beginner-level yoga, and I’m always looking to expand my collection of mugs.