Prakriti Nautiyal didn’t see herself as a coder when she decided to switch career paths. She wanted to pursue her passion for helping others by working in human resources (HR). CU Denver’s business analytics degree offered just what she needed—the hard skills, coding fluency, and business knowledge—to land her first HR analyst role after she graduated from the program in 2019.
Now, she’s a lead data scientist working to optimize HR outcomes at Lumen Technologies, the parent company of CenturyLink. “I thought CU Denver had a well-rounded program where I could learn all the skills that would be needed for me to be in the market,” Nautiyal said.
CU Denver’s Master of Science in Business Analytics program equips students like Nautiyal with the skills they need to interpret complex datasets and provide actionable insights—whether their chosen field is HR or supply chain optimization. That means learning common coding languages like R and Python but also gaining a sturdy proficiency in things like statistics, decision analysis, predictive analytics, casual analytics, and much more. “We collect data, we do analysis, we turn information into insights,” explained CU Denver’s Business Analytics Program Director Qiong Hu. “Then, we can make a data-driven business decision.”
The business analytics degree also prioritizes hands-on projects with real data sets and business use cases. This enables students to graduate with confidence to face many of the challenges that will arise during their careers because they will know how to solve the problems. That’s been Nautiyal’s experience. She gained skills through her CU Denver coursework that she now applies to solve problems with business analytics on the job. “So, if I do a project today, and if that project involves 10 steps, I’ve done it all in my class,” Nautiyal said. She feels like whatever comes her way, she’ll know what to do.
The Path to a Business Analytics Degree
Nautiyal’s career began as an electronics engineer in her home country of India, and she moved to an HR generalist role after she had earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus in human resources. “I realized human resources is my calling,” she said.
She would need to skill up to find her place in the booming HR analytics industry, and when her husband took a job in Colorado, she knew she had an opportunity to do just that. She researched several universities to find the best fit to advance her career. She looked into roles she would like to be in one day, and what skills she’d need to be hired for those positions. The curriculum of the business analytics degree at CU Denver, she thought, was the most practical. “I thought CU Denver had a well-rounded program where I could learn all the skills that would be needed for me to be in the market,” she said.
Nautiyal’s experience in engineering and her MBA with a focus in human resources set her up for success in the program, but CU Denver’s business analytics degree does not require applicants to have specific academic or work experience to be accepted. Instead, successful applicants should be able to demonstrate quantitative skills through either academic or work experience or with a Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) or Graduate Record Examination (GRE) score.
Students join the program from many different backgrounds and have different aims for how they want to apply their business analytics skillset in their careers. Graduates who earn a business analytics degree at CU Denver go on to become business intelligence analysts, data analysts, data engineers, financial analysts, data visualization specialists, operations research analysts, and more. And, they do these roles across all industries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, median annual salaries for these roles range from about $77,000 to more than $100,000.
More Than Just a Business Analytics Degree
Networking opportunities at the CU Denver Business School helped Nautiyal make friends, find professional connections, and be exposed to more business applications of what she was learning in class. The Business School is constantly bringing in relevant speakers at networking opportunities, like this year’s event on leveraging AI tools effectively and understanding where a human touch is still necessary. They also update curricula year after year and consult with industry partners to make sure student learning outcomes match employers’ current demands. Learn more about the current curriculum here.
As a student who was new to the United States, free resources and programming from CU Denver’s International Student & Scholar Services (ISSS) office augmented Nautiyal’s business analytics degree in ways that made a real difference for her. She felt that CU Denver made it easy for her to get a lay of the land and build community with fellow international students, which helped her build confidence in navigating a new career in a new country, while finding a sense of belonging. “There are so many things that you don’t know about a new country,” she said. “That support program was a plus, because you get accustomed.”
Today, Nautiyal is settled into her life in Colorado and in her career as a lead data scientist—which fulfills her passion of helping optimize HR outcomes. Nautiyal has worked diligently along the way to successfully advance her career, and it all started with the decision to earn her master’s in business analytics. She’s grateful she chose CU Denver to build her future. “It gave me a very good foundation,” Nautiyal said.
