Miller Moore joined the US Navy while he was attending the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as an undergraduate student. “I got a bachelor’s of science in material science and engineering in 2009,” Moore says. “After graduation, I spent five years on active duty in Washington, D.C., serving as an engineer in the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program.”

In 2014, Moore decided to go back to school. “That’s when I applied to the MSBA program at the Haslam College of Business,” he says. During the program, Moore gleaned a wide variety of skills that have proven helpful in his subsequent career. “The program is designed to build your character as a person, and the faculty works hard to make sure each student is well-rounded, can speak to people effectively, and have the technical skills to be successful in business.”

Moore completed his MSBA in December 2015 and was quickly recruited as a business analyst for Coca-Cola Refreshments, the largest bottler for Coca-Cola in the United States. “I do everything from reporting regular sales volume to building predictive models and forecasting outcomes,” he says. “It’s pretty much the full gamut of analytics responsibilities.” While the company is based in Atlanta, Moore enjoys the flexibility of living in Knoxville and working remotely.

The MSBA program helped to equip Moore for the range of technical tasks he carries out for Coca-Cola Refreshments. “I learned programming for analytics purposes in languages like R and Python, as well as statistics and machine learning,” he says. “Just through experience and the curriculum that everyone goes through, the MSBA [program] prepares students more than enough for the real world.”

In the future, Moore hopes to take on a leadership role in the field of customer analytics. “That would involve analytics driven toward acquiring customers, managing their life cycles and preventing them from leaving,” he says. “That’s the specific analytic vertical that I think I’m most proficient in at this point.”