BIO

“Stephen Dawkins serves as the Data Scientist for Student Success in the Division of Student Affairs at the University of Mississippi, where he uses predictive modeling and data infrastructure to identify students who need support and connect them to it before small setbacks become barriers to graduation. He brings more than 20 years of experience in analytics and data science, most recently as Head of Data Science at Amazon, where he led a team of more than 40 applied scientists, data scientists, engineers, and program managers building AI-driven recommender systems, chatbots, and fraud detection models. Earlier in his career, he worked in healthcare IT at McKesson. That background in healthcare and e-commerce at scale now shapes work that feels more personal: helping students from under-resourced backgrounds, including rural communities, first-generation students, and those with limited financial safety nets, reach graduation. Stephen is equally committed to mentoring early-career analysts and building the database-backed systems that let the university act on data rather than simply collect it. He lives in Oxford with his wife, Colleen, and their three dogs.”