Big Data Program

Harness Insights, Unleash Potential, & Empower Your Business

Big data is a rapidly evolving field with significant trends and developments. The volume of data continues to grow exponentially, driven by the abundance of connected devices and digital interactions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) play a crucial role in analyzing large datasets and extracting valuable insights. On top of that, privacy and ethics concerns have risen. The Big Data Program offered through Ashland will help you decipher the latest industry advancements to navigate the dynamic landscape of big data.
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About the Program   –   Enroll Today!   –   Curriculum   –   Instructors   –   What Others Say

About the Big Data Program

Stay up-to-date with the latest trends, developments, and best practices in the realm of big data. Learn about how big data is constantly evolving, and discover the need for new technologies, tools, and methodologies.

The Ashland Big Data Program provides you with a solid understanding of data concepts and analytics tools, enabling you to make informed decisions and communicate effectively with your team. You’ll also gain a competitive advantage by learning to leverage data-driven insights and foster a data-driven culture within your organization.

Enroll Today!

8 Modules Online ($4,995)

Rolling Admission - Start Anytime
  • Self-paced
  • Big Data Portfolio & all course materials
  • Hands-on projects
  • Interactive Discussion boards

4 Day In-person ($4,995)

Currently on Hold - Dates TBD​
  • Breakfast & Lunch
  • Big Data Portfolio & all course materials
  • Hand-on projects
  • Networking events

Big Data Curriculum

The interdisciplinary curriculum packs thought leadership, data concepts, analytics tools, innovative frameworks, and peer discussions into eight modules. Industry professionals lead you through the program while sharing their real-world expertise and guidance. You’ll identify patterns, trends, and valuable insights from large datasets to help you inform your strategic decision-making, drive innovation, improve customer experiences, and ultimately help your organization stay ahead in today's data-driven business landscape.

During the course, you'll enjoy the Big Data Ultimate Toolkit, with OVER 60 assessments, worksheets, templates, discussion posters, planning guides, and customizable presentations. All to help YOU succeed in this growing field.

You'll walk away with knowledge, plans ready for implementation, and a certificate that shows you've invested in yourself and your career.

Module 1 - Foundation of Big Data​

Learn why big data is critical from a competitive standpoint in today’s economy. Focus on the market outlook and how to gain C-suite support for a solution strategy. Understand how leading organizations are using big data to ensure a competitive advantage.
  • Discover the characteristics of big data and market outlook to understand your opportunity!
  • Explorer the four V’s (Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity).
  • Learn about the future of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
  • Review implementation and organizational challenges, as well as key advantages to using big data.

Module 2 - Big Data Infrastructure Solutions ​​

Big Data is Big Business. It requires a solid understanding of infrastructure to work properly and to achieve value for your company. Learn how to successfully implement your big data initiatives - starting with a well-constructed architecture. Whether your infrastructure is on-premise, hosted, or cloud-based, your strategy should focus on five key components.
  • Learn the 5 key components of big data strategy.
  • Understand the infrastructure options and opportunities.
  • Discover the advantages of on-premise vs. hosted vs. cloud solutions.
  • Gain insights to the possibilities in data collecting and recognize the challenges in storing data.
  • Learn the importance of analytics and visualization.

Module 3 - Data Analytics, Platforms, & Tools of the Industry​​ ​

Capturing big data is great, but you need a strategy and plan in place to analyze the structured and unstructured data in order to derive true business value. Learn to analyze the data, what analytical model should be leveraged, and which solution you should pick.
  • Discover the difference between Big Data Analysis vs. Business Intelligence.
  • Examine the value of analysis and visualization.
  • Understand the types of tools available and the best analytical models to use.

Module 4 - Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning​

AI and ML systems are not just abstract concepts; they have a significant impact on our daily lives. They drive product recommendations, suggested shows, helpful chatbots, predictive text, language translation apps, and even how your social media feeds are presented to you. Learn to formulate a strategy and enhance your organization's readiness for AI and ML implementation.
  • Discover how AI and ML can drive product innovation.
  • Develop your own AI/ML strategies to enhance readiness.
  • Learn how AI and ML come together to provide services we now all rely on.
  • Review how top industry leaders are employing AI and ML to keep their competitive edge.

Module 5 - Artificial Intelligence Workshop

​Using AI to assist you with projects is big news today. This exciting AI workshop will teach you to leverage the power of AI in your business. From code creation to creative expression, from hot topics to image generation - learn how AI is definitely pushing today's boundaries.
  • Discover (if you haven't already) ChatGPT and its vast capabilities.
  • Examine how AI is transforming industries and how to leverage its power at your organization.
  • Gain ideas to create your own project with the assistance of AI.

Module 6 - Big Data Security

Data protection is critical for corporate survival. The term "big data security" encompasses the measures and tools used to guard both data and analytics processes from attacks, theft, and other malicious activities. Identify your own strategy and your organization's readiness for avoiding potential attacks.
  • Review current challenges in big data security.
  • Identify critical financial models using time series regression techniques and statistical classifiers.
  • Analyze data sets to gain insights that allow proactive financial and staffing decisions.
  • Discover big data security models for today’s challenges, and for the future.

Module 7 - ETL Methodologies & Strategy

Understanding and selecting the right data integration process for your own data strategy is paramount. Whether you use Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) or Extract-Load-Transform (ELT) to make your data digestible, you’ll need to provide a unified view of data from multiple sources. Learn about this three-phased process where data is extracted, transformed (cleaned, sanitized, scrubbed) and loaded into an output data container. 
  • Understand the importance of transformation and integration.
  • Examine the difference between ETL vs. ELT.
  • Discover the nuances of the transformation process.

Module 8 - Digital Transformation & the C-Suite

While technicians and functional leaders may understand big data is critical to support business, in contrast, many executives are reluctant to invest in the resources needed. To convince executives your big data initiative is critical, learn how to communicate the potential business value and benefits of your efforts in a clear and concise manner.
  • Identify which components should be included in an executive presentation.
  • Understand why communicating the business value of big data is critical.
  • Discover how the MVP approach can illustrate early project success.
  • Create your own presentation and show the "pot of gold" your big data solution creates.

Capstone Project: Your Big Data Strategic Plan

​Capture your learning success and demonstrate ROI with a personalized, detailed action plan that includes goals, KPIs, major deliverables, risks, solution architecture, requirements, and more. By the end of the program your Capstone Project, templates, and materials you've worked on throughout the course formulate your very own Professional Big Data Portfolio.

Big Data Instructors

Paul Szyarto

Paul is directly involved with over 400 enterprise-wide projects throughout the world, focusing on ERP, PPM, and integration solutions. He focuses on helping with implementation of data management solutions, and has been part of more than 60 SAP deployments over a six-year period for major companies, isuch as Jacobs Engineering, Microsoft, Goodyear, and the US Navy.

His educational background includes an MBA in Finance Accounting from Oxford University, an MS in Program and Project Management from Brandeis University, and a BS in Computer Studies, Human Resource Management, and Advance Management from Wharton Business School. Paul also studied Business, Law, Computer Science, HR Management, Project Management, and Engineering. Paul holds certifications in Microsoft MCITP EPM, PMP, A+, Dale Carnegie Leadership Program, and AMP.

Stephan Dickinson

As a Big Data Product Manager with a focus on Hadoop and HDFS, Stephan has 14 years of enterprise project management experience and over 20 in the tech field. At the School of Visual Arts, he designed, budgeted, architected, and deployed SVA Computer Art’s render farm. Stephan also enjoys teaching batch scripting and programming.

Stephan's educational background includes Information Systems from DeVry Woodbridge and certifications in Microsoft MCSE and MCSA, and his expertise includes HPC Parallel processing design, Hadoop, Greenplum, PostGREs, GPFS, HDFS, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Petabyte-Scale designs.​

Antonio Zurlo

Antonio is a Principle Technical Business Developer with Amazon Web Services. Prior to this, he served as Vice President of Platform Big Data/HPC Engineering for TD Securities, focusing on HPC/BI/Big data products. Antonio has worked with major companies including Microsoft, IBM, and Goldman Sachs. He focuses on Big Data, enterprise software, PaaS, enterprise architecture, and agile methodologies.

Antonio holds a MS in Computer Science from Pisa University and his expertise includes Cloud/Grid Computing Technologies (AWS, Symphony, LSF, MPI), REST, MicroServices design, Python (PyCharm, Flask), Hadoop/Spark, Kafka, Basic Machine Learning, Basic Graph, R/RStudio, Python, NVidia GPU/CUDA, C/C++, Distributed Caching, Messaging Middleware, J2EE, C /CORBA, UNIX/C IPC, SQL, Data modeling, and Cassandra/Mongo/Vertica.

Dino Vitale

Dino is an HPC professional with expertise in building shared services environments for multiple application architecture models (Grid computing, private Cloud – PAAS, SOA, high speed messaging, Hadoop/data warehouse), operational support models, and managing HPC/BI/Big data products on public cloud platforms.

Dino holds a MS in Financial/Risk Engineering from New York University, with a Computer Science major and Mathematics minor. His specialties include: parallel computing, building large scale grids, GPUs/CUDA, MPI, OpenMP, Linux optimization, scale out storage, workload schedulers, infrastructure performance tuning, Hadoop environments, data caching over grid, operational automation for large-scale clusters (provisioning, elasticity, utility billing, monitoring), leveraging micro-services, streaming architectures, creating next generation self-service Data Platforms for Data Scientists/Analysts for machine learning, and multi-cloud for Data Archiving and HPC bursting.

John Nives

As an Operating Partner with Gridiron Capital, John focuses on Digital and AI Transformation firmwide. Previously with IBM, he was a consultative sales leader for Watson Marketing and Analytics with a team that resulted in over $100M in growth. He also worked with AT&T where he led the explosive growth of an advertising technology venture. He has worked in AI and Big Data for companies such as IBM, Nielsen/Yahoo, and Kraft foods.

John's educational background includes an MBA from Pace University, with studies in Software Development, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Electronic Trading and Market Data Applications, BI, OLAP, SQL, Event Stream Processing.​

Stephene Klein

Stephene Klein is a trailblazer whose academic and professional journeys stand as a testament to her relentless pursuit of excellence. She holds three master's degrees - an MBA, MPH, and MPHA - from Everglades University, Boca Raton, FL, where she graduated summa cum laude, marking her place at the pinnacle of her class with an unrivaled 4.0 GPA. This academic titan not only delivered the Graduate Commencement keynote address, inspiring a crowd of over 1,000 attendees, but she is also a notable faculty member guiding the next generation of leaders. Her profound insights and wealth of knowledge have shaped countless C-suite executives, fostering excellence and innovation on a global scale.

Outside of academia, Stephene has consistently made a global impact. She is a Gold Medalist, Storytelling Writing Award Winner (2024), and the recipient of the Global Vision Award for Brand Strategy (2023). She was also the featured cover story of South Florida Magazine (2021), and has etched her place in the global business echelons. Her dynamic role at Zschool, saw her spearhead over 500+ Advisory Board meetings, annually, shaping the strategic direction for over 10,000 CxOs and senior executives worldwide.

With 20+ years of award-winning business development and engagement marketing experience, coupled with 15+ years of senior leadership roles, Stephene consistently drives sustainable revenue growth for leading global companies. Her extensive experience across multiple domains, including sales, marketing, and partnerships, and her well-established global network, position her as a catalyst for success in complex business environments.​

Elissa Cham

I am a seasoned leader with a proven track record of driving strategic growth and program excellence. As a Senior Director and Instructional Designer at Zschool, I have been at the forefront of shaping and executing high-impact programs that engage top-tier executives and industry leaders. My expertise encompasses leading comprehensive sales and marketing initiatives that not only attract prospective clients but also build enduring relationships with key stakeholders.

With a deep-rooted background in customer success and client relations, I have consistently elevated customer retention, satisfaction, and advocacy through innovative approaches and a commitment to excellence. In my prior role as Customer Success Manager Lead and Trainer at Sykes Enterprises, I was entrusted as the primary liaison for our most valued clients, spearheading efforts to maximize product adoption, uncover upsell opportunities, and advocate for client needs across multiple departments.
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My extensive experience in customer service leadership, honed through pivotal roles at Aerus Electrolux and Acosta Sales & Marketing, has equipped me with a profound understanding of customer-centric strategies and team management. I am passionate about fostering growth, delivering value, and inspiring excellence in all aspects of program management and client engagement.

Rosemary Frappier

Rosemary Frappier is a seasoned professional with over 30 years of leadership, customer experience, and strategic management expertise. As an Instructor, she draws on her extensive background to teach and facilitate senior leaders, helping them achieve organizational success.

Rosemary holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Montclair State University and is a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, highlighting her dedication to process improvement and operational excellence. Currently, as the Director of Advisor Experience at Zschool, she has been pivotal in shaping business strategy and leading teams with distinction for over four years.  Her extensive experience is further deepened by her prior roles as a Program Director and Manger for executive education programs, where she refined her skills in Customer Experience, Design Thinking and Transformative leadership. She has also held various leadership roles in the non-profit segment, including Treasurer for the Marine Academy of Science and Technology and President of the PTSA in various schools within the Matawan Aberdeen Regional School district. 

Known for her caring and empathetic nature, Rosemary is a devoted wife of 25 years and a mother of three. She enjoys traveling, reading, and spending time with her dog, Margo. Her ability to connect and seek out the opinions of others make her sessions engaging and fun.

What others say about the Big Data Program. . .

"My favorite parts were CHATGPT and AI! It's all everyone is talking about, and I personally loved understanding it and how I can leverage it in my own life. On a career note, learning about security, governance, the cloud, data lakes, etc. was great for me to know. The better I can understand the positives/negatives of certain IT architectures, the better I can understand my customer's needs. Thank you for a great course!"
- Alexia P., IT Project Manager

"Lots of in-depth information and take-home posters and slides that help detail the market in how it currently stands. The slides and handouts are useful and will definitely be referenced in the future"
- Alex S., CEO

"I loved all hands-on activities and particularly experimenting with AI tools - my first go at it as part of this course so, THANK YOU for making me do and showing how easy it can be to take the first (baby) steps!"
- Michaela P., Network Architect
​To learn more about the Ashland Big Data Program and how it helps companies and executives, schedule a call with the program manager.