This year, MIT Commencement Ceremonies were back in-person for the first time since 2019. After the LGO Class of 2022 Convocation, LGOs celebrated with a special department graduation reception with family, friends and Staff. At the annual graduation event, Executive Director, Thomas Roemer announced the winner for LGO’s Best Thesis award. This year’s winner was Andrew Tindall, who analyzed hybrid work models at Verizon.
Andrew used a variety of data sources including HR scheduler data, hybrid employee schedules, badge data and meeting data from Google to help answer the question, “how is hybrid work is impacting organizations,” a challenge, that many organizations face after the COVID-19 pandemic. Andrew found collaboration data can be used to align work groups to maximize in-person collaboration gains while minimizing the number of days in office per week. Andrew’s data collection was used to model employee networks and cluster employees into communities. In his pilot program, he increased stakeholder alignment from 13% with heuristically set schedules to 45% aligned with optimized schedules.
One of Andrew’s advisors described his theses as using “state of the art data analytic methods, and surfaces insights that challenge recent assumptions about work and management.” An LGO Alumni reviewer cited that Andrew’s research was “very relevant and current…strong background and a demonstrated understanding of both the calculations/mathematical components of the methods as well as the practical applications.”
Andrew graduated from LGO with an MBA and an MS in EECS. Andrew earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in various roles as an Army Officer. After LGO, Andrew plans to join Verizon as a Technical Product Manager for Advanced Analytics.
