Solving Analytics Puzzles

Oscar Guzmán came to his job at Northern Trust after a first shot at entrepreneurship, something he hopes to return to after further building his knowledge and skill base.

As a senior analytics developer, he says his job is like “playing detective,” pulling together disparate pieces of data and interviewing people to create a better understanding of a problem.

“I enjoy getting people excited or creating ‘aha’ moments in understanding,” says Guzmán.

At Illinois Institute of Technology, Guzmán was active in a range of organizational and leadership positions in Engineers Without Borders, Delta Tau Delta fraternity, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

“I think that what my Illinois Tech experience did was actually help me recognize more of my organizational and management capabilities,” says Guzmán.

After graduating from Illinois Tech, he got a job in data and analytics at Slalom, leaning on Illinois Tech connections to help get his initial interview.

There he found that the skills he learned in diagramming chemical engineering processes translated to creating data management processes in businesses. After several years in similar roles, Guzmán took the leap to launch his own company.

He billed his startup, XREA, as a CARFAX report for real estate projects. If a developer had a plot of land and wanted to figure out what to build on it or if they had a project and wanted to find a plot to build it on, XREA provided artificial intelligence-enabled reports to help them know what to build.

Guzmán says that in the Chicago startup community, telling people that he graduated from Illinois Tech was a boost.

“It created an instant connection in a startup environment where connections and warm intros are so important,” he says. “When I say I’m from Illinois Tech, people recognize that there’s a strong focus on entrepreneurship.”

XREA aimed to offer a fast and low-cost solution for scoring markets all over the United States on how well they could support different types of real estate uses. The company received industry interest through investment funding and recognition in Forbes. 

But as the company turned to scaling up, Guzmán felt the company’s next steps were beyond his area of expertise.

“I knew it was my time to step away and focus on building my knowledge,” he says. “I’m focused on building my quantitative expertise and diving further into the economic policy space.”