MSA Alumni Spotlight
Anna Riehle (’21)
Principal Data Analyst, Capital One
Washington, DC
About Anna
I’m based in Washington, DC, where I’ve lived my whole life with my dog, Nellie. I grew up playing music and still enjoy playing both the violin and viola. Professionally, I work as a Principal Data Scientist at Capital One’s headquarters in McLean. I earned my MS in Analytics from Georgia Tech in December 2020, completing both the Business Analytics and Computational Data Analytics tracks, and later received my MBA in May 2021.
How do you use analytics or data science in your day-to-day work?
My work is very cross functional. I actually wind up working with people in a lot of the roles that MSA graduates wind up going into - data and software engineers, data scientists, product managers, business analysts, as well as project and process managers. I’ve had the privilege while I’ve been at Capital One to work on some real lean-in projects in the ATM debit space. My role in those has generally been around building and maintaining reports and dashboards, helping to stand up data infostructure for modeling and analysis. We’ve been working on moving from batch to streaming data, validating new data sources and incorporating them into our existing reporting suites.
What do you enjoy most about your job, especially when it comes to working with data?
I love how data can empower people to make better-informed decisions that both delight customers and make strong business sense. My career has centered on encouraging and supporting organizations in building this capability, and I’ve seen them at very different stages of their analytical journeys. At Capital One, where I work now, data is woven into everything we do. Many first-order decisions are automated through machine learning models, which we actively monitor for efficacy, drift, and abnormalities, with a strong emphasis on interpretability. In my role, I regularly work in SQL and Python to manage datasets with hundreds of millions—sometimes billions—of records, leveraging cloud-based platforms such as Snowflake and AWS to handle data at scale.
What's one favorite memory you have from the MSA program-academic, social, or professional?
One of my favorite memories from my first year in the MSA program is studying in Clough with my classmate and friend, Shannon Kehoe. Even if we were working on assignments for completely different classes, we enjoyed being together and found that we each focused better when studying side by side. Many of our weekends were spent this way—working in parallel and encouraging each other along the way. I really appreciated the MSA’s collaborative culture and often looked to my peers not only for motivation but also for support in deepening my understanding of what we were learning. That sense of community was a huge part of what kept me motivated throughout the program.
What MSA skill, class, or project helped you get your job or grow in your career?
CSE 6242, Data and Visual Analytics, was one of the most impactful courses for me in the MSA program. It gave me the confidence to quickly learn and apply new tools and technologies—something that has been invaluable throughout my career.