Meet the Kalibrate team: Hartwell Hooper, Principal Data Scientist

At Kalibrate, we believe our success is driven as much by our people as our technology. Here, we meet Hartwell Hooper, our Principal Data Scientist, and find out more about his role at Kalibrate.

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What’s your role at Kalibrate?

As TAS’ (now Kalibrate) Principal Data Scientist, I help the organization in any project that requires advanced analytics.   

By combining computer science, modeling, statistics, and geography, along with over 30 years (yikes!) of practical experience in corporate real estate research, I help our clients make sound, data-driven business decisions.   

Often this involves complex manipulation and creative visualization of client data.  Other times it involves playing the role of on-call consultant for our clients or the Kalibrate sales team. 

What does a typical day look like?

I get involved in pretty much any outside-the-box data analysis project that Kalibrate comes across, so typical is hard to pin down, but I’m hands-to-keyboard, face-to-screen much of the day. The meetings and conference calls I get provide a nice way to break up the day. 

The most rewarding of those involve presenting research findings to clients. By showing retailers where they can expand or scale back their existing store networks, I’m contributing value to their brand.  

Why did you choose to join Kalibrate?

This was a very personal decision for me, and one made of desire, not necessity.  I’ve worked with the TAS co-founder Bill Dakai, in a number of different capacities for more than 20 years.  After I retired from CVS Health in 2016, I didn’t need to work full time, but I wanted to work at TAS. 

Bill has given me the opportunity to continue doing what I love, and he’s found the right role for me to play in the company.  

What do you think are the greatest challenges and opportunities facing the retail sector?

Now is the time to get creative. Specialty retailers, big box, category killers, REITS, really everyone needs to rethink how they interact with customers, and rethink how they assess opportunity. 

Brick and mortar retailers need to work on their online presence and online retailers need to understand that customers still expect an opportunity to go to a store.

Organizations making decisions with the right data have a much higher probability of getting it right. 

By integrating analytics that utilize datasets like mass mobile data, lifestyle segmentation and geosocial, organizations can make decisions with a much higher probability of getting it right.