“I had the opportunity to work with Emilie on several complex physician partnerships and joint ventures and was thoroughly impressed with her work. Her financial analytics and project work summaries were excellent. She also worked with individual physicians and multi physician groups and negotiated business and financial terms. I highly recommend Emilie as a business partner.”

“Emilie is one of the most effective and consummate professionals with whom I’ve had the pleasure to work. Her knowledge of how to drive a company’s financial health, from planning and budgeting to reporting, forecasting, and modeling, is masterful. Emilie will sit side-by-side with your team to ask questions and develop informed insights together. Her expertise has been instrumental in leading our budgeting, financial planning, and forecast tools, uplifting our insights into, not only finance, but operations, too. If you have the good fortune to work with Emilie, you will quickly realize (as we have) that her depth and breadth of experience, and ability to translate to leadership and business objectives, is an asset to almost any organization. Emilie is a great simplifier, and this is evident in all she does.”

“I have known Emilie professionally for three years. During that time, I enjoyed the opportunity to work with her on several large transactions for a very sophisticated client. Emilie provided leadership as a strong project manager, keeping the team focused on meeting stated timelines and corporate objectives. As a data analyst, she also quickly analyzed large amounts of data, synthesized it and turned it into useful information which allowed the business leaders to efficiently work through thorny issues. Besides business acumen, Emilie’s intangible contributions could be summed up as the perfect blend of professionalism and levity which was much appreciated during tense periods of negotiation. Unequivocally, I look forward to working with Emilie on future projects.”

“Our firm first engaged Emilie to evaluate and build out key finance functions, including a budget, performance reporting, and additional custom tools. From the beginning, Emilie invested time to understand the needs of our company and desires for future growth. In addition, her presentation skills and ability to organize strategy into an executable format are exceptional. In particular, I appreciate the nature in which Emilie embedded with our team, taking care to explain analyses, methods, and desired outcomes to our stakeholders less familiar with financial concepts. She not only diagnosed our primary challenges but has created lasting infrastructure to operationalize change in our scaling company.”

“I had the pleasure of working with Emilie during her final capstone course in MICA’s Data Analytics and Visualization graduate degree program. It’s rare to find someone with Emilie’s incredibly strong work ethic, talent, and dedication to getting it right. Emilie embraces the iterative process until she lands on the right solution. When others might settle for ‘good enough,’ Emilie doesn’t stop until her work reaches a level of perfection she’s satisfied with. Emilie is a lifelong learner, with a growth mindset unmatched.

Emilie’s project, ‘Perpetuation of Privilege,’ asks the audience to re-think their trust place in the U.S. News College rankings system. Her research and analytics build on questions raised during Malcolm Gladwell’s original podcast on the topic, further exposing the discrepancies and alarming gaps in U.S. News’ processes and data behind their well-known publications. She walks the audience through a compelling visual data story, articulating the discrepancies, while also revealing a misalignment between the metrics and assumptions on what is being measured. Emilie developed a consistent visual system, which she uses to encode information and data to successfully help the audience decode and digest what was originally a complex data set. ‘Perpetuation of Privilege’ doesn’t leave the reader hanging, providing vetted alternate sources. Perhaps most importantly, this piece asks readers to dig a little deeper into all publications’ findings moving forward, especially when it will be used as the basis for life changing decisions.

I would gladly work with Emilie again and recommend her for any role or project that requires a strong analyst and talented visual storyteller.”

“Emilie's devotion to learning and commitment to her craft is readily apparent through her portfolio, but what stands out to me is her leadership and engagement. Emilie was a student in my Data Storytelling course at MICA and it happened to be my first time teaching the course. From the first week she was willing to provide feedback to ensure she and the entire class were working through material that would make them better data analysts. It takes a special person to be willing to negotiate power dynamics and have direct conversations about what is working and what isn't and I remain appreciative for her bravery and leadership. The entire class benefited from her presence and engagement, to say nothing of her own rapid growth in her ability to communicate technical work and analysis. I'm still hopeful I can work with her in another capacity someday!”

“I had the pleasure of working with Emilie Schaffer during her studies at MICA's Data Analytics and Visualization program. I was impressed with Emilie's clear thinking, whether it was in data research, storytelling, information design, or graphic design. Her capstone project shows not only these qualities, but that she is also someone who recognizes the power of data and visual storytelling and is willing to use it to help make the world a better place.”

“Emilie was a tremendous asset to our project, and I would work with her again in a heartbeat!”