I am Waseem Thabata, a recent graduate of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where I earned my Master of Quantitative Management. I was born in Palestine and raised in New Orleans, two places that shaped how I think about resilience, community and opportunity. Before Duke, I studied business analytics at the University of Notre Dame, where I became interested in how data can be used not only to understand problems, but to make better decisions in complex environments.
My path to Fuqua was not a straight line. After college, an unexpected shift in the job market pushed me into a different kind of learning environment. I helped manage retail electronics stores, where I had to quickly understand operations, customers, inventory and people. Later, I started and scaled a mobile service business, which taught me that strategy is not just something written in a slide deck. It is tested in real time through customers, constraints, trade-offs and execution.
At Duke, MQM gave me the structure to connect that practical experience with a stronger analytical toolkit. One of the biggest lessons I took from Fuqua is that good analysis is not just about building the right model. It is about asking the right question, understanding the business context and communicating the answer in a way people can actually use. One project that captured this for me involved applying predictive modeling and optimization to large-scale sports event planning, where our team translated complex data into recommendations around revenue and venue strategy.
In my personal time, I enjoy working out, playing sports and building side projects. I also like hobbies that push me outside my comfort zone, including skydiving, ATV riding and dirt bike riding. I am drawn to work that uses data in practical ways, especially when it helps people make better decisions or creates greater access to opportunity.
