Dr. Linda Vytlacil
Marketing scientist, advisor, mentor and adjunct professor of business
University: John Brown University
Location: Siloam Springs, Arkansas
Dr. Linda Vytlacil, vice president for data science/global data & analytics platforms for Walmart Labs is a recognized people leader and commercial manager with extensive experience in building teams and creating analytics capabilities to harness profitably the power of big data analytics.
With business development experience and P&L responsibilities in global consulting services, Linda is a successful and award-winning team leader who is skilled at identifying and developing talent.
She brings numerous skills to the classroom including technical credentials in advanced analytics across customer domains such as strategy, loyalty, digital marketing, pricing strategy, retail, product innovation, market research, econometrics, demand forecasting, and performance
We asked Dr. Vytlacil a few questions. Her answers are below:
WHAT STUKENT COURSEWARE HAVE YOU USED?
I am using the “Marketing Analytics” textbook and the Winters and Cloverleaf case studies for both my undergraduate and graduate-level marketing analytics classes this spring.
My undergraduate students are also working through the beta version of Mimic Analytics.
WHAT TEACHING TIPS WOULD YOU SHARE WITH OTHER PROFESSORS?
I challenge my students to consider application of the concepts, to think critically, and to integrate other concepts from their major into the class. Thus, we will often complete exercises that connect course lecture with data analytics.
For example, when studying web scraping, I set out a typical scenario for an entry level marketing analyst, and together we articulate the problem, develop relevant hypotheses, scrape necessary data, hygiene and prep the data for analysis, test the hypotheses (in either R or SPSS), interpret the findings, and recommend relevant marketing actions.
WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES AND TALENTS?
I’ve had a long career as a marketing science practitioner, and continue to work with the Marketing Science Institute, which promotes practitioner and academic engagement and collaboration.
I also enjoy mentoring students and early-career professionals, especially women in STEM.
CONNECT WITH LINDA VYTLACIL
Thank you, Linda, and congratulations!
