Meet Alexa Colasurdo

Can you give us a brief introduction of who you are and what you do at your current organization?

My name is Alexa Colasurda and I’m a data scientist at SAS.  I’m on the JMP team, and I support marketing and sales teams by making reports, predictive models and everything in between.

Why did you join BPW?

I think it was exactly a year ago that I was really seeking a tribe.  I had a lot of failed networking group attempts, tried some events on Meetup which turned out to be really awkward, etc.  But then I found the “Beyond the Boys Club” political panel that BPW hosted last year, with Deborah Ross, Janet Cowell, and Tamara Barringer and I ended up coming to that and was just so inspired.  I found that this was a group of really passionate, driven women, which was refreshing.  Everyone is very inspiring, self-aware and just cheers each other on.  To have all of that in one room was really exciting, so I decided I had to join.

What hobbies/interests do you have outside of work?

My husband and I have his and hers 4-wheelers, so we like to go 4-wheeling.  We also have his and hers kayaks, and I enjoy yoga and spending time with my cat.

If you won the lottery, what would be the first thing that you would do? 

So this may seem really boring, but I would put it in a very conservative fund and try to be a responsible adult.  I may also get a hot tub… but probably just the former.

       

What is the best thing that happened to you within the past couple of months? 

Well I got married, so that was great. And professionally, I’m really excited because I just submitted an abstract for a client summit in Europe next year, to present a paper.  So fingers crossed that works out!

Who is your favorite super hero and why? 

This is a hard one because I don’t watch anything with superheroes in it, so I don’t really know many of them.  I want to say Wonder Woman because she’s a bada** and she’s a woman.  But the only superhero movie I’ve actually watched is Ironman 3, partly because I found out that they filmed part of it at SAS so I wanted to watch it for that reason. Ironman was actually pretty cool.  So either Ironman or Wonder Woman would be my favorite.

What is your biggest pet peeve? 

My biggest pet peeve is when women (especially younger women) apologize for things that don’t require an apology.  I always try to address this with younger women, especially those who I’ve mentored, because when you apologize it sets you up to be inferior (when you’re not), especially if you’re the only woman in the room.  So please, don’t apologize unless you’ve actually done something wrong!

What is your favorite game/board game?

I really love fantasy football.  I’m one of 2 women in our fantasy football league at work and I actually run the league.

If you could learn to do anything, what would it be?

I really want to learn how to DJ.  Not like a wedding DJ, but more like Steve Aoki, DJ-ing a festival with hundreds of thousands of people. I think that would be super rad.

What can BPW do to support you in your career?

Continuing the dinner meetings every month, and continuing to connect this group of women with our speakers, who are always other inspiring women in this area that we can learn from.  It’s awesome that BPW gives us a place month to month that we can gather. It’s a great way to keep up the networking and a way to continue developing friendships with each other.