Home / Info Session Online July 28 2026
The job market for data roles in Alberta looks different than the headlines suggest. Twenty-two percent of real Alberta data postings require no stated education credential. Sixty-four percent of those same postings describe responsibilities that go well beyond what the posting says. These are Alberta-specific numbers that haven't been published anywhere else. This session puts those numbers next to two people who prove them. Meghan Pick spent six years in oil and gas accounting before a data bootcamp led her into data governance work, now at H&R Block. A second speaker, a data and analytics leader whose own path into the field started somewhere else entirely, joins her to make the same case from a different angle. Neither took the route the job postings describe. Both are doing the work anyway.
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM MT
Platform: Online
Online attendance available — link sent after registration
Free to attend
Blaine Horner is a Calgary-based program and operations professional with over a decade running complex membership programs. He spent eight years at SPE International, a global engineering membership organization, progressing from section coordination to overseeing membership delivery and volunteer operations across Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and North America, including two years in London. He later ran operations for a national accelerator placing mid-career energy professionals on teams building new enterprises.
Meghan Pick is a Data Governance Specialist at H&R Block and was previously with at the Alberta Motor Association (AMA), where she leads data stewardship initiatives — including implementation of the Erwin data governance platform and a 200+ term business glossary — while also serving as Scrum Master for her team. She brings a diverse background spanning data governance, agile leadership, and accounting, having previously worked as a SOX compliance auditor and accounting analyst at Cenovus Energy. Meghan holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting from the University of Alberta and completed a Data Science Bootcamp at Lighthouse Labs. She is a Certified Scrum Master (SMC) and Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt, and is based in Calgary, Alberta.
Dr. Peter Tunkis is a Manager and Team Lead in Data & Analytics at Critical Mass in Calgary, where he leads a team of data engineers and analysts delivering insights and reporting for major US and Canadian clients. He previously spent over four years as Lead Data Scientist at Arcurve, building the firm's Advanced Analytics practice across industries including energy, mining, and oil & gas, and held data science roles at Nationwide and Huntington National Bank. Peter holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from The Ohio State University, where his Fulbright-Hays-funded dissertation research examined the social and legislative behavior of Polish and Czech Members of Parliament. He brings over a decade of experience spanning applied research, statistics, and machine learning, and is fluent in English, Polish, Czech, French, and German.
Career changers doing their homework. Experienced professionals looking to move into data-adjacent roles. Anyone who has read a job posting and wondered if they were reading it right.
Email us: udc@ppdm.org