Meet a WEXer: Chad Creelman

For Marketing Analytics Manager Chad Creelman, joining WEX five years ago was an opportunity to dive more deeply into his career in business intelligence and analytics, as well as return to Maine. Chad’s fond memories of the five years he spent living in the state as an adolescent influenced his decision to attend Colby College, where he majored in computer science. After 12 years working out west honing his skills, he made the move to WEX and hasn’t looked back.

Marketing Analytics to Drive Business

Chad is passionate about business intelligence (BI) and the role of the marketing analytics team in supporting the success and growth of our North American Fleet line of business. One area of focus for his team is to work closely with sales and marketing, generating lists of leads for use with email, direct mail and telemarketing efforts. They then analyze the results from those efforts and report back with data and analysis that help the business make strategic decisions about where to spend marketing dollars for the best results.

“When I was at Colby, I knew I wasn’t going to change the world with my programming ability, but I did love technology, the big picture, and strategic thinking,” says Chad. “I wanted to put it all together and straddle business and IT, and that’s what led me to BI, where we extract the intelligence out of data, and then use it to drive business decisions.”

Chad’s team is comprised of seven “incredibly smart, analytically minded people” whose talents run the gamut from those just learning to code all the way up to a data scientist with a Ph.D. in computer science. The common trait that’s ingrained in everyone is an insatiable curiosity when it comes to data. He notes that people in their field need to be excited, not frustrated, by change, and be agile enough to move and adapt with the needs of the business.

The ability of data to drive WEX’s success is central to Chad’s approach to his work. He notes that the best companies in world – like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (the “FAANG” Companies) – may all sell something, but at the end of the day they all live and breathe data. Since joining WEX, he’s been excited about the opportunity to help transform the company into a customer-centric marketing powerhouse and says, “it’s been really fun to grow into this world where data is paramount to what we do.”

Life at WEX

While Chad didn’t know anything about us before he applied for his job, he’s a self-proclaimed “happy WEXer.”  He notes that while there is the expectation that you achieve at your highest potential, the company promotes a healthy work/life balance – recognizing and respecting that he’s a dad and a husband in addition to being a WEXer . A generous benefits policy — along with little things like bikes to ride between buildings and free locally roasted coffee – all help keep him energized. As he notes, “you can’t ask for a more supportive environment where you’re appreciated and feel like the decisions being made are meant to make life better for you.”

Last year, Chad was invited to participate in a campus recruiting event for our summer intern program. He was excited to go to Bowdoin and interview for two intern positions with his marketing analytics team, and was “blown away” by the students he met. After the full-day event, followed up by a slew of phone interviews, his team welcomed Ian and Adrian – affectionately nicknamed “AI” by the team. Chad says that the interns quickly were making an impact, helping the marketing analytics team with daily work, as well as contributing on special projects. The experience, Chad hopes, was rewarding for Ian and Adrian and provided some real world application of the economics and computer science skills they’re learning in college.

Looking ahead, Chad’s team is working on expanding its reporting and data visualization tools into more cloud-based dashboards and advanced analytics using AWS (Amazon Web Services). This move, he says, will help them to build an analytical environmental with big data capabilities – allowing his team to crunch lots of data in a quick amount of time.

“Some people call WEX a 30-year-old start up,” observes Chad. “I love the growth and the get-it-done attitude of the company. Right now, our team’s focus is on Fleet North America, and I envision a future where we help out everyone around the globe.”