The data hero’s journey

Amanda Gerdes is the senior manager of data engineering at Blizzard Entertainment, where she has helped spark an explosion of big data and driven architectural efforts to harness it into a working power source, fostering the same level of exuberant geekiness about data as she and her comrades have always had toward video games. Mandy believes that life is a true level grind; that sometimes experience points come from major questlines and other times they just come from a bunch of dead dire rats; that being a good leader is shockingly similar to being a good dungeon master; and that FemShep is the only Shep. She loves big data, Atlas stones, and Diablo 3 seasonal leaderboards. Mandy holds master’s degrees in systems engineering and business administration, the title of California’s Strongest Woman 2014, and more Heroes of the Storm master skins than you can shake a Doomhammer at.