Meet the Study Buddies: Carrie Bennette

Welcome to our new series "Meet the Study Buddies" where you'll get to know the employees who make up our talented team passionately working to bring solutions to clinical trial enrollment. 

Name: Carrie Bennette

Job Title: Senior Data Scientist

Hometown: I’m pretty nomadic and moved around a lot as a kid and young adult.  By far the longest place I lived was Seattle, where I was for the past 10 years. But I’ve also lived across the Northeast US, England, France, the Bahamas, and for the second half of 2020 I ‘lived’ in a camper van in the Southwest US

Currently live: As of 2021, I get to call Vermont home

How long have you been at OneStudyTeam?

I joined in April 2021

Why did you join the team?

It’s not everyday that a company posts your dream job, but that’s what it feels like happened. I spent several years of my life during my PhD building models and using data science to try and improve patient enrollment in clinical trials. Now I get to tackle the problem with smart and helpful colleagues and access to lots more amazing data. It’s so fun

Where did you work prior to joining?

I worked as a senior research scientist/statistician at the Institute for Disease Modeling (part of the Gates Foundation) and before that was a data scientist working with real-world clinical data at Flatiron Health

What is your favorite part of being on the team?

I really enjoy the other people I get to work with on the data analytics squad. They’re a really supportive, smart, fun and hard working bunch of folks 

What is your favorite moment or project during your time at OneStudyTeam?

Well, my favorite project is definitely the one I’m working on now. I get to build some really cool models to predict enrollment on clinical trials. Low enrollment on trials is a big problem in clinical research and something I spent my PhD studying; I even built a smaller scale prediction model for enrollment onto publicly funded oncology trials as part of my dissertation

What is your advice for others looking for opportunities on the data team?

This one is hard to answer.  My main advice is to be a good fit for the team’s needs and priorities, which are reflected in the various job postings 

What’s your favorite OneStudyTeam perk or benefit?

I’ve really appreciated the wellness days.  Both for the actual extra day off (always nice!), but also for the signal it sends everyone that the company cares and understands it’s been a tough year

If you could describe the team in one word what would it be?

Empathetic 

Which of OneStudyTeam’s core values resonates most with you? Why?

I will say “build things that are useful and unique”.  While the others also deeply resonate, in many ways I’ve been able to take those for granted as I’ve been fortunate to always have worked with others who put their soul into their work, operated with integrity and respected each other.  What I sometimes felt was lacking, especially in academia, was the focus on building things that were truly useful rather than just novel or interesting

What was your fun fact when you joined OneStudyTeam? 

That I sold my house in Seattle and lived in a camper van with my family for ~5 months, traveling throughout the Southwest, before landing in Vermont for the winter (and then deciding to stay!)

Favorite place on earth?

That’s hard. I love to travel and see new places and am deeply moved by and drawn to varied and wild landscapes.  But I also cherish being close to family and friends, who are pretty spread out at this point and often in more populated areas. So there really isn’t one place I could pick

What color best describes you?

I just took a random online quiz. It said ‘red’. Something about being passionate and driven, which my husband says is very accurate.  But the questions they asked leave me suspect.

If you could give a piece of advice to your younger self what would it be?

Go for it! It’s a blast and worth it

What’s a unique fact about you that few people know?

I lived in France for a year, but am terrible at speaking French. It’s so sad, I wish I was better at foreign languages

What are your hobbies?  

Mountain biking and skiing, especially downhill after human powered ascents and painting, especially watercolor

Interested in joining the team? Check out our open roles here.