Name: Marisa Gigliotti
Class Year: 2016
Title: Senior Manager, Business Analytics
Organization Name: Ardelyx
1. In one sentence, what does your job entail?
I serve as the brand analytics lead for one of our commercialized drugs and am the point person for any data and reporting needs related to this brand.
2. What planned and unplanned events connected you to your industry and your first employer after Holy Cross? How did you learn/decide it was a good fit for you?
After Holy Cross, I attended the ESTEEM Master’s Program at the University of Notre Dame, where I was able to couple my math degree with entrepreneurial and business skills. While at Notre Dame, I attended a career fair on campus where I came upon the AbbVie booth. After becoming ill with an autoimmune disease my sophomore year of college, I had a keen interest in joining the biopharmaceutical industry and be part of an industry where patients are the utmost priority, and AbbVie seemed like the perfect fit for me to begin my career. I joined AbbVie as an information technology leadership development program member where I participated in 3 8-month long rotations across the company, which allowed we to grow my analytical skills while learning about so many different facets of the business.
3. What were you involved in when you were on campus?
I was a member of the women’s varsity golf team and served as captain my junior and senior years. I was a member of the mathematics student academic advisory committee and also served as a math tutor.
4. What was your major and how did it affect your career decisions?
I was a math major. I always have had an interest in working with numbers and this field of study greatly helped build my critical thinking and analytical skills. Given the growth of big data and analytics, I felt that this could be a perfect fit after graduating in order to be part of an industry that is continuously growing while also leveraging my math background.
5. What are one or two skills that you developed at Holy Cross that you use in your work?
The first is analytical thinking. I work with numbers everyday and have to report those numbers to our internal teams. Each team interprets data in different ways so it is not only essential to make sure you have the correct data, but also ensure that the way the data is presented, communicated, and visualized makes sense to the consumers of the data. The second is time management. Adhering to the academic rigor as well as the demands of being a student athlete at Holy Cross was challenging, but taught me so much about how to handle busy schedules.
6. What advice do you have for students on campus today?
Keep an open mind. I was part of the 3-2/4-2 pre-engineering program and was headed to Columbia after Holy Cross until I learned about the ESTEEM Program at Notre Dame and decided to pursue that instead. As someone who planned to move back to New York after graduation, I never expected to move to Indiana and then Chicago when I took the job at AbbVie, and I am so grateful for all those experiences that Holy Cross connected me with.