Eric Alessi, EWMBA 20 - Providing Insights on the Insights Team | OneHaas

Eric Alessi, EWMBA 20 - Providing Insights on the Insights Team

Today at the OneHaas Podcast, we have the pleasure to chat with Eric Alessi, EWMBA class of 2020 and a member of the Blue cohort. Eric recently transitioned from Pinterest to Masterclass as an Insights Manager.

Eric grew up in New York but spent some time in Italy, originally where his father was from. He studied History and Legal Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

In this episode, Eric shares his career experiences from being a contractor at Facebook, an Ops Specialist and Insights Lead at Pinterest, and now an Insights Manager at Masterclass. He tells us some fascinating details about being part of the insights team and what it's like to be on the other side of the table.

Eric also talks about what led him to get an MBA, what he's excited about in his new role in Masterclass, and his favorite masterclasses.

Episode Quotes:

His decision to get an MBA

"My primary motivation for starting the part-time MBA program was really around knowledge. I'd never really taken a marketing class or a strategy class, obviously, our core to an MBA. I just felt like those were huge gaps in knowledge myself. And it actually ended up being very helpful for transitioning on the insight side and move into a more business-focused role."

How does an Insights Team utilize data?

"We try to do a kind of a broad read of an audience or a topic to really find different insights that would be relevant to different industries. And so, that's more of an open-ended process. It takes a lot of time because you need to start with tons of unfiltered data and insights, and when you're really trying to look for those meaningful nuggets of information that are insights and not just random pieces of data, but things that tie together, things that illustrate a larger trend, are statistically significant, you get very excited when you find those and they're really compelling, but it takes a lot of time."

What's exciting about his new role at Masterclass

"What really got me excited about this role was that, in just talking to people at the company, using it myself, there was such strong overlap between what I enjoyed about Pinterest of like people using the service to explore their passions and having a positive feeling about what they're doing.

It's entertaining, but you're learning something new. You're exploring something that you're interested in. I find that very much like a compelling value proposition."