Taj Pirzada was mid-career and had just wrapped up a consulting job for a complex, multi-year tech implementation. The feedback he received from leadership stuck with him: he was great at forming teams to complete the project, but he couldn’t answer the most technical questions.
“I talked to a lot of people in my network,” Pirzada said. “I asked them what’s big, what’s next, what’s coming, what’s important.”
The answer came one day on the golf course. A consultant from Accenture who is now Pirzada’s friend and mentor advised him to explore analytics. Companies were spending billions to harness data. While Pirzada had experience working with databases, he needed to grow his skills to make a career pivot.
He began watching YouTube videos on the topic, but to be taken seriously, he needed a graduate degree. He applied for the first-ever cohort of the new M.S. in Data Science & Analytics program at Georgia State’s Robinson College of Business. At the time, Robinson and the Georgia Institute of Technology were the only two schools in the state offering a graduate degree in analytics. Pirzada felt Robinson’s program would be a better fit because it was a master’s grounded in science housed within a business school—a perfect fit for his career goals.
However, a wrench was thrown in his plan: he wasn’t accepted into the program. “I was really shocked and disappointed. ‘How dare you, right?’” Pirzada joked. “I was told that my math was no longer fresh. The program is very ‘math-y’ and involves a lot of statistics and all that.”
Pirzada took a full year of prerequisites including Calculus 1, 2, and 3 as well as mathematics and database management before reapplying.
“I’d been out of school for 15 years. It was really hard for me, but I got it done,” he said. “I woke up at 4 in the morning to do my homework. People hated on me because ‘he’s doing his homework’ and ‘he’s doing all of the problems,’ and I was like, ‘You’re also half my age. That’s why.’ I was in a different life stage.”
Pirzada earned a 4.3 cumulative grade point average, applied to the second cohort, and was admitted. The program had grown significantly. While the first cohort comprised three students, Pirzada had more than 30 peers.
Taking those math prerequisites proved to Pirzada that he could do hard things, and he grew even more confident through the program’s experiential projects. Pirzada and his classmates used data from real companies like Truist (then SunTrust Banks) and the American Red Cross to apply the techniques they had learned in class.
“The company reps were kind to us because we were students, but they also had business expectations,” Pirzada said.
Today, Pirzada runs AI, North America for Nike, serving as the point person for a region that represents about 45 percent of company revenue. Nike’s massive supply chain is one of his main points of focus. He also stresses the importance of maintaining a “human in the loop” philosophy, meaning he seeks to utilize artificial intelligence to make people’s jobs better and more efficient, but never to replace people.
In his previous roles, Pirzada would hand off solutions to engineers for implementation. But now, he has a seat at the engineering table.
“I have multiple teams buildings solutions from the ground up, but more importantly, we also deploy them,” he said.
One of Pirzada’s top career achievements so far is attaining a master’s degree.
“It was a big deal for me. I considered pursuing an MBA a few times, but somehow, I ended up with a STEM master’s and conquered math,” he said.
Pirzada dedicated 80 to 100 hours per week to his schoolwork and often stayed on campus until 2 a.m., because he had to complete his homework in a lab or because he wanted to maintain momentum. During graduation at the Georgia Dome, he stood on the field and felt glad his hard work had paid off.
Pirzada’s other greatest achievement? His current role at Nike.
“Instead of speaking on my behalf, people let me do the talking, which wasn’t the case early in my career,” he said. “It has taken many years to get here, but it was well worth it.”