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  I grew up in a major industrial city in Communist China just east of Beijing in a world where information was scarce. I was born into a pretty traditional Chinese family back in the 1960s and lived with my five siblings and parents in a small, crowded house. When the Cultural Revolution hit in 1966, the schools never officially shut down, but essentially nothing was taught at the time since students were expected to participate in the revolution. Throughout that period, almost all novels and movies were banned because they were not considered appropriate for educating students. But rather than causing me to lose my interest in learning, the ban led me to develop a habit for reading anything I could get my hands on, and my natural hunger for information grew. As my love for collecting and consuming information continued, I decided to become a data scientist. I moved to the U.S. to complete my Master’s degree and Doctoral Program. Today I work with “Big Data” at Experian, developing analytical solutions for financial telecommunication and insurance companies. What’s amazing to me about my job is the fact that 90 percent of the data in the world has been created in just the last two years. Data Scientists like myself retrieve, sift, analyze, process and store all the data according to a business or consumer’s needs. I believe that data tells a story; it’s business intelligence that can help an individual or business identify where they may need to change or adjust in order to move forward. For consumers, it can help them improve their credit scores and secure an affordable loan. It can help protect identities by detecting and stopping suspicious activity. For businesses, the data can mitigate risk, help prevent fraudulent transactions or even ensure they’re marketing to proper audiences. I believe that data has the power to transform lives and societies for the better. My job is to help clients and consumers understand the story of their data so they can take financial control, achieve their goals, and help meet the needs of customers. I have always told myself, “no matter the situation, do your best.” For me, doing my best is using this lifelong passion to help others succeed.  

When it comes to credit for small businesses, it’s a classic chicken-and-egg situation: you can’t get credit until you have credit history, and you can’t get credit history until someone grants you credit. I know this first-hand because my own parents were small-business owners in California. My parents had built an independent insurance agency. I distinctly remember as a kid sitting in the backseat of our car and overhearing the discussions they would have about their struggles to grow the business or how they would make payroll that month. Many small businesses don’t have access to small-business loans or business credit cards, so they rely entirely on the business owner’s personal credit to make purchases. This means that while there may be a credit history for the individual, there is none for the business itself. This also means that whenever my parents needed money to get through the month, they essentially had to put their livelihood at risk because there was no separation between personal and business loans. The lack of access to funds, and the consolidation happening in the insurance industry at the time, led my parents to take another big risk – they sold the business and our house, and they liquidated their retirement accounts and put everything into a restaurant franchise. They felt there would be more stability representing an established brand owned by someone else. When I graduated from my MBA program years later, one of the things that first attracted me to Experian was the opportunity I had to ease the burdens of small business owners through my work here. The work I do really hits home, because I’m working every day to open up small-business credit, using different types of data. In today’s economy, a lot of great business ideas – profitable ones, at that – never get a chance to see the light of day simply because they don’t have the capital they need to grow. Experian is making business ideas a reality by gathering, analysing, combining and processing a breadth of new data that allows us to develop credit scores for more people and paint the most realistic picture of a situation. By verifying a business’s history, its social media accounts, its website sophistication and traffic, and customer reviews, we can measure a small business’s legitimacy, how long they’ve been operating and how they’re growing. This information, coupled with transaction data, all help determine a business’s credit worthiness and allow us to give its owners greater access to capital. Data is a huge enabler for positive change because it can give small-business owners access to credit that they wouldn’t receive otherwise. When used in the right ways, data can empower and enable small businesses to get the funding they need to hire employees, invest in their business or open a new location. In many ways, I’m helping people just like my parents.

April = Tax season. For some people, it is a dreaded time of year when they have to comb through file after file to make sure every financial document is accounted for. It can be a sore reminder that the previous New Year’s resolution of being organized may have failed. With your taxes filed (hopefully you didn’t have to extend), you may have the motivation to get your financial documents back in order and do some spring cleaning. What better time than now, during Financial Literacy Month. This month is dedicated to highlighting the importance of financial literacy and teaching Americans how to establish and maintain healthy financial habits. Every week Experian discusses financial behavior topics on Twitter and Periscope Join the @Experian_US #CreditChat every Wednesday at 3 pm Eastern time It is the perfect time to take a step back to evaluate your financial standing. Especially if you were in a situation where you were scrounging up funds to pay Uncle Sam. Do you need to adjust your budget or even create one? Do you know how to budget? If you were one of the lucky ones who expects a refund, do you feel confident in making the best financial decision on what to do with it? There are lots of resources to help guide you and answer your questions. Take advantage of those resources! To give you a jumpstart, Rod Griffin, Experian’s director of public education, has the following tips to help you improve your credit history: Review your credit report regularly —Your personal credit report is an easy-to-read record of your credit accounts and total indebtedness. Be sure to obtain a copy of your credit report once every 12 months (and especially before major purchases) and dispute any information you believe is inaccurate. You can request a copy of your report directly from Experian or once every year from Annual Credit Report. Check your credit score —Credit scores can play an important role in your financial journey. They translate the information in your credit report into a number reflecting the risk of doing business with you. To check your risk, request a credit score when you order your credit report. You will receive an explanation of what the score means and which details from your credit report are most affecting it. Keep your utilization rate low —Your utilization rate, or balance-to-limit ratio, should never exceed 30 percent of the credit limit. Your total credit card balances should never be more than 30 percent of your total credit card limits, and you don’t want any one card to have a balance of more than 30 percent of its limit. Both can hurt you. Remember, 30 percent isn’t a goal; it’s the maximum your balances should ever be. The lower your utilization rate, the better. If you have missed payments, get current and stay current —Late payments, called delinquencies, may have a major negative impact on credit scores. To see the fastest improvement in your scores, catch up on late payments and pay down your balances. Late payments are the most important indicator of credit risk, so they have the greatest and longest-lasting impact. The more recently the missed payment occurred, the greater that impact will be, and the more missed payments you have, the longer it will take to recover. If you fall behind on your payments, contact your lenders to see if they can improve the terms of your debts. Need answers to your credit questions?