Laura Thomas

Laura is a Senior Research Programmer in the Workforce and Human Services Division with over a decade of experience in data analysis and visualization in the economic and workforce development space. She has experience with R, R Shiny, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and SQL for data cleaning, analysis, and visualization. She worked previously as the research and analytics specialist for a combined chamber of commerce and economic development organization, using data from the U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and state-level labor market information. Ms. Thomas holds a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning with a specialization in economic and workforce development from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. Her passions include eating local, acquiring more books than she can possibly read, driving her WRX, and enthusiastically supporting whatever her sons are passionate about (lately Dungeons & Dragons and baseball).