Data Ninja: Anthony Saitta (MBA ’20, MS Statistics ’24)

In 2017, Anthony Saitta had never heard of Baruch College, let alone the Zicklin School of Business. Now, the native New Yorker (who just accepted a position as Senior Data Analyst at MRM) has a freshly minted Zicklin MBA under his arm and is already enrolled in his second master’s degree program here.

Back then, Saitta was at St. John’s University studying law, but always sought after the data signals that underscored all functions of business. While he was researching graduate programs, a distant cousin who worked for JetBlue and made a “very good living” told Saitta he’d earned his MBA at the Zicklin School.

“I honestly had no idea the school existed before that,” Saitta confesses. 

He’s certainly made up for lost time. Deciding early on that data was his main interest, Saitta concentrated in business statistics for his MBA and is now working towards an MS degree in statistics.

“My trademark is my ability to take complicated subjects and make them simple,” says Saitta, who calls Stephen Hawking his inspiration: “He made a very complicated topic understandable to anyone, and that’s what I want to do.”

The data, Saitta goes on, could be anything from behavioral information from a marketing analysis, the predictability of stock prices, or the price of pharmaceutical drugs. “Data is not sector reliant—there’s information everywhere.”

And while Saitta had never heard of the Zicklin School, the opposite is true of the circles he now associates with. “I had no idea it’d have such a phenomenal impact,” he says. “If you mention the school to people in finance, tech, information systems—everyone lights up and says, ‘Oh, you went there?’” 

If he had to use one word to describe his Zicklin experience, Saitta says it would be “opportunity.” Why? “Nowadays it seems things are locked behind walls of education. But Zicklin allowed me to make a career change. For someone who hasn’t taken a linear path in their career, that’s amazing.”

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