Career Panel

Abraham Kabakoff: After graduating with a degree in German and computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, Abe followed his love of beer on the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals, during which he interned at a brewpub near Munich. In 2006 he enrolled in the UC Davis Extension’s Master Brewers Program and passed the Institute of Brewing and Distilling’s exhaustive Diploma in Brewing Examinations. He is currently Head Brewer of the R&D Brewery at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Chico, Calif.

Sandra Mohammed: Sandra graduated from California State University, Chico in 2006 with a BS in Mathematics with an option in Statistics. She attended graduate school at University of California, Davis and received an MS in Statistics in 2008 and a PhD in Epidemiology in 2012. After school, she decided to pursue her interest in the technology industry and is now a Senior Analyst at Medallia, Inc. in Palo Alto where she helps in the fight against mediocrity by collecting, analyzing and reporting terabytes of customer experience data for multibillion dollar clients in real time.

Dustin Paisley: I’m a Chico native, 1993 graduate of Pleasant Valley High School. Graduated CSU Chico in 1999 with B.S. in Mathematics emphasis on Statistics (Thank you Nancy Carter). Graduated University of Kentucky 2001 with M.S. in Statistics (Thank you Neil Schwertmann). I have been teaching Introduction to Statistics and Business Statistics for both Butte Community College and CSU Chico since 2001. In 1998 I started an internship with a small Medicare fraud detection company who has been bought and sold several times over and is now SafeGuard Services LLC., an HP Company. My role is Chief Statistician, I oversee all data modeling and sampling for the prevention of fraud, waste and abuse of both Medicare and Medicaid funds in California, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam. I also work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of Inspector General and Assistant United States Attorney’s offices to defend the processes in Federal and Administrative courts and have been called upon to testify within the court system as an expert witness.

Jon Takahashi: Jon graduated from Chico with a BS in Mathematics:Statistics in '09. He then went and received a MS in statistics in 2011 from CSU Eastbay, and was hired by JP Research, a small research and consulting company as a statistical analyst. He mostly works in litigation consulting, mainly automotive cases, but does branch out. What he mainly does is SAS programming, looking at several different Automotive Accident databases.

Leon Warman: I've spent 25 years architecting computer systems that have changed people's lives at the most innovative companies in history. As a principal engineer at Amazon.com, Microsoft, Philips, Boeing, Sierra Geophysics, and NASA I've been fortunate to participate in advancing the state of art in Cloud Computing, eCommerce, Organizing the Worlds Information, Mobile Communications, eMail, Medical Diagnostics, Earth Substructure Analysis, and Space Exploration. My professional goal has been to constantly push the envelope of innovation in ways that deliver significant customer value while reinventing myself at the pace of the technological revolution.