Projects
Ketchup Please Production
Madison, NE to Oconomowoc, WI
It's one challenge to even come up with an idea for a CPG product, but an even steeper hill to climb to secure consistent and quality production.
Since joining Ketchup Please in January 2023, I've overseen the production of 150,000+ units, guided the brand through an organic fraud crisis with one of our spice suppliers, launched 2 new SKUs (Barbeque Please), and transitioned the brands' reliance on 2 co-packers with major quality issues to our own in-house 7,500 sq. ft. facility capable of producing 3,000 lbs. of sauce per day.
Ketchup Please Endcap Execution
Meijer Local Program (Grafton, WI)
After a successful pitch to Meijer's Local Supplier Relationship Team in February 2024, Ketchup Please was given a 6-month runway starting June 2024 to prove we could expand beyond the initial 7 stores awarded.
Ketchup Please became the top local vendor out of the 7 in the WI market by moving 6.36 units/SKU/store/week and assumed the shelf space left by brands that wouldn't be going inline in March 2025, ensuring a full and presentable endcap for Meijer customers.
Ketchup Please Operation Hino
72 Hours to Get to Pallets of Boxes to NE
To produce a bottle of Ketchup Please you certainly need tomato paste, vinegar, spices, bottles, caps, and... case packs. 72 hours before one of our largest production runs at our NE co-packer in September 2024 we received word from our corrugated supplier that the case packs we needed for production wouldn't be ready in time.
Running low on inventory we wouldn't take no for an answer. So, in 72 hours, my business partner Evan and I sourced our custom case packs from a different supplier in Platteville, WI and then hopped in a 26 ft. box truck and drove the boxes to NE, arriving at 4 AM on the day of production.
Ketchup Please Scheduling Platform
Production, HQ, Farmers Markets, & Demos
Having team members in different states, at different stores, and different farmers markets presented a scheduling challenge for our team. We we're often texting and calling team members for their availability and then manually adding shifts on Google Calendar, usually a 2 hour process each week creating 100+ calendar invites.
With a clear need for a scalable system, I built kpketchup.com/schedule using Google Apps Script over the course of 3 weeks. Now, all team members have their own team member ID that they use to submit their availability two weeks out. After that deadline, the "Admin" view allows users to schedule team members to locations based on their availability and immediately issue calendar invites. What used to take 2 hours now takes 10 minutes.
Congress Unified Managed Accounts
R (RStudio/Shiny) Dashboard Project
Working alongside Brandon Farr, Head of Data Analytics at Congress, I was able expand my R skills using the rhino, echarts4r, bslib, dplyr, and ggplot2 packages to build a fully functional Shiny dashboard, effectively separating data entry from data exploration (some Excel files originally had more than 90 columns!).
Note: All data referenced in the screenshot at left is "dummy data" due to the proprietary nature of the real data used in this project.
Congress Road to $25B AUM
R (RStudio) Analysis Project
During my six-month co-op at Congress Asset Management, I sharpened my data visualization skills using the R ggplot2, hrbrthemes, and dplyr packages.
Chris Lagan, the president of the firm, tasked me with analyzing 40 quarters of data for four public asset management firms viewed as competitors to Congress.
There's nothing like reading through 15 10-Ks! Thank goodness for FactSet's compiled data and shout out to Angie Dulin, my fellow co-op, for leveraging her internet sleuthing skills to gather critical intelligence. Please click here to view the whole deck.
Broke Again
Personal Music Project
Ever since my first exposure to musical theater at First Stage Children's Theater as a fifth grader, I've been fascinated by the making of music.
My dream to make my own original song became a reality in July 2023 when I collaborated with Jack Olson (a high school friend and LA-based producer) to finish the song we began writing during the pandemic. "Broke Again" is now available on all major streaming services. Please click here to listen. I'm excited to pursue music further as I continue my work with Ketchup Please.
Major League Baseball Payroll Analysis
DS 2001 Group Project
For this project, I teamed up with a group of data science students to determine if there is a correlation between MLB team payrolls and win percentage.
Our team leveraged our Python skills to run regression analyses for the payroll and win percentage data of ten MLB seasons. We also visualized the change in correlation coefficients over the ten seasons to determine if there were any significant outliers.
After our analysis, we concluded that there is a moderately strong, positive relationship between MLB team payrolls and win percentage. To view all deliverables from this project, please click here.
Star Wars Sentiment Analysis
DS 2000 Individual Project
For this project, I was tasked with building a Python program that analyzed the script of Star Wars: A New Hope to visualize and report sentiment.
We were given a list of positive and negative words and iterated through the entire script to find the frequency of these words within each line. Using this analysis, I was able to calculate a score for each line and aggregate the results to showcase the moving average sentiment throughout the movie.
To view the deliverables from this project, please click here. I was also able to apply this same concept to categorize marketing emails at my internship with Direct Supply... more details coming soon.
Linkedin Video Ad Creative Creation
Direct Supply Marketing Internship
During my first summer at Direct Supply, I was tasked with redesigning the LinkedIn paid advertising creatives for our eProcurement line of business.
With previous static creatives producing lackluster engagement, I decided to leverage my previous Canva experience to design an animated advertisement that was engaging and designed for the LinkedIn platform (1200 x 1200 pixels vs. previous 1200 x 628).
My creative improved our LinkedIn Ads click-through rate (CTR) by 17% (as of 12/21/2022) and produced two demo requests in the first two weeks of the campaign launch.
.png)
Need It Now
Spring 2022 Husky Startup Challenge
Need It Now is a peer-to-peer item-sharing mobile app for college students. We help college students save money, especially those who travel long distances to get to campus, by providing a platform for students to rent the items they need at school from other college students.
Our team pitched at the Husky Startup Challenge Demo Day, Northeastern's flagship startup accelerator, where we took home a $500 cash prize. To view our pitch deck, please click here. To watch our pitch at Demo Day, please click here.
We have pressed the pause button on development as I focus on Ketchup Please.