Hi, my name is

Ricardo Cortes.

I build the systems behind the decisions.

Nashville-based analytics professional operating at the crossroads of business strategy and technical execution. I've helped 100+ clients stay on top of their KPIs, shipped AI products that handle thousands of customer interactions every week, and today I'm the real-time nerve center of a financial services sales floor. I translate complexity into clarity.

  • 0Years in analytics
  • 0Clients supported
  • 0Rows modeled

About Me

Most analysts are strong on one side of the job: either they can build the technical infrastructure or they can communicate insights to stakeholders. I've spent the last several years getting serious about both, cleaning and validating data that feeds machine learning models, building BI layers that serve dozens of clients at once, engineering AI agents that handle thousands of customer interactions, and running real-time operations analytics for a large-scale service organization. Each project pushed me deeper into how data actually flows through a business and where the real decisions get made.

My edge is that I get both sides. I can write the SQL, build the data model, set up the pipeline. I can also sit with a non-technical stakeholder, understand the actual decision they are trying to make, and deliver something they can act on. Most people are strong on one side. I work in the middle, and that is where the high-value analytics work lives.

A few technologies I work with regularly:

  • SQL
  • Python (pandas)
  • Power BI
  • Tableau
  • Looker
  • dbt
  • BigQuery
  • OpenAI API

The Stack I Work Across

I am not a dashboard-only analyst. I work the full width of the stack, from pulling messy data out of source systems to shipping the AI product that acts on it. Step through the five stages below to see how each one connects to the next.

01 / Ingest

Get the data out of wherever it is hiding.

Every reporting problem I have inherited started upstream: data sitting in a vendor export, a CRM nobody fully trusts, a spreadsheet three people edit at the same time. I build the pipelines that pull all of it into one place on a schedule, so the number on the dashboard Monday means the same thing it meant Friday.

I care about the unglamorous parts here, things like idempotent loads, sane naming, and schema changes that do not silently break a report six layers downstream.

SQLPython (pandas)ETL PipelinesBigQueryPower AutomateREST APIsPower Query
  • Built ETL pipelines moving call-log data from Excel and client sources into BigQuery
  • Cleaned and modeled a ~1.2M-row transit dataset in pandas
  • Validated large-scale user-report data feeding downstream ML classification models

How I Work

Four habits show up in almost everything I ship, regardless of which tool is involved.

Start with the decision

Before I open a single table, I want to know what someone is actually going to do with the answer. Monitoring a live operational metric only matters if it changes what happens next, so I build with the decision in mind first and the query second. That habit is what lets me dynamically adjust routing, staffing, and priorities in real time and keep a floor hitting its targets as conditions shift throughout the day.

Build it once, build it right

I would rather spend an extra day getting a data model right than spend the next year explaining why two reports disagree. I design workforce forecasting models from historical patterns to project volume and staffing needs, and I build reporting layers meant to survive contact with reality: new data sources, edge cases, and the inevitable request for one more cut of the same numbers.

Automate the part that repeats

If I am doing something the same way twice, it becomes a script the third time. I engineered an AI chatbot on the OpenAI Assistants API that lifted customer satisfaction by 30%, and deployed a RAG-based agent handling 1,000+ weekly interactions that cut live-support workload by 20%. The goal is always the same: free people up for the decisions a model cannot make yet.

Make it land

None of this matters if the person on the other end cannot use it. I publish recurring performance reporting that keeps leadership ahead of emerging issues, turn process inefficiencies into measurable capacity-planning improvements, and design dashboards simple enough that someone can open one without being walked through it first. Good analytics work ends in an action, not an attachment.

Featured Projects

Swipe to explore

Tableau

Sales Dashboard

An interactive Tableau dashboard covering sales performance across KPIs, trends, and segment comparisons, built for fast, self-serve exploration.

Power BI

LinkedIn Survey Analysis

Analyzed LinkedIn survey data in Power BI to uncover key trends, enhancing decision-making through interactive visualizations and data-driven storytelling.

Python · Tableau

Transit Signal Priority Analysis

Measured how TSP impacted WeGo bus schedule stability (Feb–May 2025). Cleaned and modeled ~1.2M rows in pandas and built Tableau dashboards for city transit planners.

Excel

Financial Modeling

Built end-to-end financial models for cash flow, investments, and loan amortization, with interactive dashboards and projections for retirement and business forecasting.

Live Dashboard

Sales Dashboard built in Tableau, interactive and embedded directly below.

What's next?

Let's work together

I'm open to data analyst roles and freelance analytics work. Whether you have a question or just want to say hi, my inbox is always open.

Say hello