Alumni Feature - Peter Kim '17

As working adults, we change jobs or titles – but what about when we want to start a new career? The thought of going back to school or changing a career path can be daunting. For Peter Kim ’17, it was no different – until a chance encounter with an interview by a Lewis professor.

“For many years, I was eager to switch careers into data science but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. It had been a good deal of time since my undergraduate degree in business, so I had a lot of self-doubt about whether a master’s degree was a viable path.”

When Peter came across an interview on a career website given by Lewis University Assistant Professor and Director of the M.S. Data Science program, Dr. Piotr Szczurek, he contacted the Lewis admissions office.

“There was an admissions person who was really great about addressing my questions, and she encouraged me to apply! I was so happy that day I was admitted to Lewis. I worked really hard at Lewis, but I was also managing the demands of a full-time job and family (wife and son).”

 “Lewis gave me a broad base in computer science and math. Since we covered so many different topics in 12 courses, it pushed me to learn very quickly. In many ways, I worked much harder than in my undergraduate degree, with a more intense focus. The hiring manager said he hired me because I knew Phyhton/Pandas and Tableau (both of which I learned at Lewis).”

While Peter feels passionate about data science, he also held a deep-rooted curiosity for finance. It’s what led him to launch his own personal newsletter, HardyStocks.

“Hardystocks is a side project that I launched in March 2019 as a financial newsletter for a long-term focused audience. I really created this newsletter for myself, to share my findings on a problem I have been working on and thinking about for over 10 years. Since I was in undergrad, I have been fascinated by investing and stocks. I had developed an investment philosophy from extensive reading, even before I had any money to invest. But I could never figure out how to implement my investment research approach because of the labor-intensive nature of calculating metrics with a long-term perspective. Only after really understanding data science, did I realize that I could let the computer perform all the calculations for me. Now I take the findings of my research and publish articles for like-minded people.”

HardyStocks is designed to help those who want to manage their own investment portfolios. The content caters to audiences who enjoy reading up on financial and business opinion-pieces and gives tips and tricks to navigating the world of investing.

“One important lesson that everyone must learn is that it’s really hard to save a dollar and really easy to lose it. And yet even people who want to perform research on investments often don’t know where to start.”

Peter hopes in the years to come, HardyStocks can gain a strong following of members who not only want free content, but those who want to subscribe for more specialized pieces. He feels the knowledge he gained with his Lewis education and the tools from his professional background can come together and help HardyStocks take off.

Peter continues to be an engaged and active alumnus here at Lewis. He believes in the power of giving back in the hopes it will change the lives of students.

“Lewis gave me the opportunity at a time when I felt very stuck and eager to switch careers. At the time, I remember feeling how difficult this journey was. I always knew I wanted to help other students follow this journey after me. Incidentally, I was a part-time teaching assistant for a local six-month data analytics boot camp. I remember my Lewis Professor, Dr. Daniel Ayala, and he would always thank the students at the end of the course. He would say in the process of teaching, that is where there are great opportunities to learn. I found the same experience when I was a teaching assistant in that I had the privilege to learn from the students in a miraculous way. I hope all Lewis students have an opportunity to pass on what they 

learn in the future, too.”

Peter credits the university’s ability to work with students from all educational backgrounds and the flexibility of online classes with his success. In 2017, Peter earned his M.S. in Data Science from Lewis University and less than two weeks after graduation, he was offered a full-time job. Peter currently remains in that same position as a Data Scientist for a healthcare start-up company in Orange County, California.

To learn more about HardyStocks, visit the website at https://hardystocks.com/.

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