On Sept. 15th, 2023, the University of Wyoming welcomed back Min Gong, a former graduate student who is now an economist and science lead with the multinational technology company, Amazon.
Dr. Gong came to the business building on campus and spoke about her education, in which she obtained two PhDs and she earned her PhD in economics here at the University of Wyoming.
She also discussed her roles prior to working with Amazon as the Director of Behavioral and Data Sciences at Walmart, where she led three data science teams that impacted the processing of new products and programs at both Walmart and Sam’s Club.
However, she decided to leave Walmart, despite enjoying the position, due to a lack of sufficient leadership.
Dr. Gong said that she rarely lost a scientist on her team; however, after she lost her three top economists, she decided to leave as well and venture to Amazon. Dr. Gong now works as the company’s economist and science lead where she pilots the causal inference team as well as the machine learning team.
She leads teams of economists, applied scientists, and data scientists who work to increase practicality and utility for Amazon as a whole as well as its third party sellers and customers.
Although Dr. Gong specializes in science and economics, she has become an efficient leader and has been placed over multiple teams whose decisions are crucial in production and maintenance of Amazon.
When asked about the traits that she seeks out when overseeing employees in her team, Dr. Gong reported that she finds the economists that are more directly motivated by challenge to be much more important and beneficial to the team and overall efficiency, than those who are motivated by money.
When asked how her Doctorate in Psychology has impacted her role as an economist and a leader Dr. Gong stated that, “In economics the problem is what do people do and how can we change the people’s behavior so that they do what we desire them to do. The task of psychology is […] why people do what they do.”
Dr. Gong then explained that these two concepts coincide with each other and play hand in hand with economics and the experiments that she conducts in her research and work with Amazon in the interest of increasing functionality for the company and its users.
Byson Taylor, a freshman in the college of business who is studying economics attended the presentation on Friday.
Taylor asked Dr. Gong how she would advise an econ student to choose which of the many open doors of opportunities to go through with the econ career path. Dr. Gong advised him to not get caught up with attempting to find the best door yet when he has this time to explore so many doors.
Dr. Gong’s advice was to explore everything that you can and find what you love from there; don’t be tied down to one option before you see what is before you.
After the presentation, when asked, Taylor reported that the main takeaway from Gong’s presentation was, “Don’t get caught up in the big goal. Still enjoy the ride and continue to improve what you are doing.”
