Anna Merkl

Associate Information Security Analyst

My current position as an Associate Information Security Analyst has been unmatched due to the large amount of change that we all have experienced from 2020. Due to COVID-19, my team went from an in house group to moving completely online with many of us moving to different cities and states along the way. Having the experience of working both in house and remotely has allowed me to have the opportunity to grow my communication skills not only with my team but also with the clients I serve on a day to day basis which is a vital skill for success in any career moving forward. This position has also helped me grow my overall technology experience by introducing me to the world of Cyber Security which is going to be crucial for any technology company moving forward.

As an Associate Information Security Analyst I perform remote social engineering with Financial Services clients including Phishing and Vishing testing, conduct vulnerability assessment scans on internal and external networks to identify client vulnerabilities, administer external penetration testing to test the success rate of brute force attacks on client systems, diagnose policy reviews and compare existing security policies against top industry standards, and communicate with key stakeholders of projects, including clients and Project Managers.

Analytics Project Manager

During my Senior Capstone course at Louisiana State University, my team and I were selected to work with an LSU student-run music startup called Revibe. Revibe is a music application that allows artists to create playlists across multiple music platforms including Spotify, Youtube, and more while also allowing artists to upload their songs to the Revibe platform where they can do everything from selling merchandise to having access to analytic insights on how they are performing on the platform. For our project, our team was tasked with creating a dashboard that Revibe Executives could show to potential investors that showed their growth as a company and their music industry-specific statistics.

During my time as Project Manager for Investor Analytics at Revibe, I defined the data needed for the project, led the analysis, and provided the client with specific strategic recommendations, applied contextual knowledge about artists and the music industry into our data analysis and interpretation, managed a team of 5 students for 20 weeks to ensure project success through adaptation and strategic delegation, developed a detailed project plan with CEO and CTO of Revibe to monitor and track the progress of the project, and was honored as Capstone Project Winner from LSU College of Business for design and impact created with Revibe’s Internal Metrics Dashboard.

Music Insights Research Scholar

As part of my College Honors completion, I was asked to complete extensive research and a hands-on independent study where I answered a question within my major through methods I have learned in my studies. For me, a dream of mine has always been to work in the music industry, and I wanted to dig a little deeper into the relationship the music industry has with technology, as well as what we can expect moving forward.

During this project I collected, prepared, and explored a variety of music data, and constructed new methods to draw insight from this data, communicated with various business and music professionals to gather information and create industry insights, completed a comprehensive research study on technology’s impact on the music industry from 1877 to 2020, presented research findings and insights to a board of 3 technology and music professionals and 100 students, and utilized Python, R, Excel, SQL, and Tableau to create effective and insightful dashboards to demonstrate research findings.

Summer Analyst

In my sophomore year at LSU, I applied to Goldman Sachs as an Operations Summer Analyst in Dallas, TX, and lucky for me that appeared to work out rather well! During my time in the Dallas office, I worked with the Mortgage Loan Servicing team within the operations division and assisted with many reporting functions as well as data visualization projects. At the end of the summer, my managers approached me and said that they thought I would be a great candidate for their Corporate Headquarters located in New York City, and lucky for me the New York City team thought I would be a great fit as well! This led me to my second internship with Goldman Sachs during the Summer of 2019 where I interned with the Urban Investment Group, Merchant Banking Division, and Special Situations Groups. My primary function on this team was to look for opportunities for automation as well as develop a sophisticated dashboard for the teams to use for tracking their progress.

Below are just a few of the things I am most proud of completing during my two summers at Goldman Sachs:

• Automated the team's reporting processes reducing time spent reporting by 75% globally
• Coded macros in VBA leading to an 85% decrease in time needed to run team funding functions
• Recommended candidates for Robotic Process Automation in daily processes across the business unit
• Designed a dashboard in Tableau & R to track team functions in real-time as well as predict trends moving forward
• Collaborated with other interns from over 15 countries on final internship presentation on the trends of the businesses we interacted with over the Summer

Louisiana State University

GPA: 3.7

While at LSU I completed courses that covered many integral parts of the Information Technology field including Data Mining, Data Warehousing, Python, Agile Project Management, Database Management, and Business Data Communications. This degree path also allowed me the opportunity to take several General Business courses including Corporate Finance, Marketing Fundamentals, Micro and Macro Economics, Intermediate Accounting, and Strategic Management.