The Digital Analytics Association Difference Maker award recognizes analysts making a difference in their community.

I am excited to share that Evolytics’ Liam Huffman was voted a finalist for the Digital Analytics Association (DAA) 2021 Difference Maker award.  The Difference Maker award “recognizes an analyst who makes a difference in their community or in the world.”

Liam is certainly a difference maker within Evolytics, and we’re proud that his peers within the DAA community agree!  Liam’s nomination focused on three key contributions to the analytics community:

First, he is a leader of the DAA’s anti-racism book club.  Liam’s interest was born out of his own journey to broaden his perspective on DEI issues.  The more he read, the more he realized how others could benefit from the same education, and he wanted to build a space to learn and grow as a community.  Liam’s leadership within the DAA book club includes selecting content, developing reading guides, developing ground rules for safe and productive conversation, coordinating 40+ participants across three reading groups, and serving as a group moderator. 

Second, he is a mentor for the Kansas City Public School (KCPS) system.  Liam has a high-school aged mentee as part of this broader KCPS program designed to help engage students.  Liam worked with his mentee to set higher education and career goals during his freshman year in 20/21, and develop one-, three-, and five-year plans for completing high school and attending junior college.  In support of these plans, Liam has worked with his mentee on college prep, financial literacy, and making connections in his planned professional field. 

Third, he is a blogger focused on building data literacy.  Concerned by data he’d seen mis-represented in the news, Liam joined forces with a few other passionate analytics practitioners to develop Evolytics’ Data-Informed Voter blog series.  The series aimed to be as neutral as possible while informing voters how a professional analyst would interpret data during an election cycle.  Liam’s role included authoring two blogs, serving as an editor for others’ blogs, developing data visualizations, and serving as a source-finder.  Blogs he authored include: Voter Methods Election Results Illustrated by Bubly and Data Collection Methods and the Real Voter Turnout.

The winner of 2021 Difference Maker award will be announced Oct. 6 at the Reveal Party during the DAA OneConference.  In addition to competing, Liam will be speaking at the OneConference; if you are attending, you don’t want to miss his session, Data Informed Voter Series: Fighting Misinformation by Teaching People to Think Like an Analyst.

In the meantime, we celebrate Liam and all of his difference-making contributions over the past year!