The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published that 38% of statisticians are women, a number that Ellee Mortensen, a junior double major in data science and computer science, is changing one graph at a time.
Mortensen currently analyzes student data for Simpson College, serves as the data analyst for the Simpson softball team and recently became the data management intern for 6-4-3 Charts, a cutting-edge baseball and softball analytics service that partners with all levels of college athletics and a few MLB organizations.
Mortensen became interested in data science at an early age by watching her sister’s softball games.
“I felt too idle during them, so I took up scoring the games on the Gamechanger app,” Mortensen said. “I was fascinated by the wide array of statistics that the app generated, and I wanted to learn more about them. I quickly took an interest, and I began diving deeper into softball and baseball stats. I’ve never looked back.”
Since then, Mortensen has had nothing short of a successful career. In addition to her internship and roles in campus analytics, she serves as an institutional data analyst undergraduate assistant at Simpson and information technology team leader. She is also a recipient of the Sarah Langs Women in Baseball Analytics Scholarship. The scholarship will enable her to attend the 2025 Society for American Baseball Research Analytics Conference. She was also accepted into the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Mentorship Program presented by ESPN.
But being a decorated member of a male-dominated field comes with its challenges.
“As a woman, it’s hard not to fall victim to imposter syndrome when your field of interest is largely male-dominated,” Mortensen said. “It helps to seek out strong female role models who can show you that it is possible to succeed, despite the odds. I find that hearing their success stories helps me better envision my own.”
When asked how her recent internship was going, she mentioned how valuable it has been for her career.
“It has definitely been enlightening,” she said. “I have fallen even more in love with data, specifically sports data, and I know without a doubt that I have chosen the right career path for me. This experience has been vital for building my resume.”
Mortensen said she is most proud of the databases she created.
“To have extensive scrimmage and season data compiled in an organized way is really useful,” she explained. “Whenever a coach or player asks me for information, I can easily pull it up and give it to them. It takes a great deal of time to maintain these databases, but I am happy to do it to help the team.”
Mortensen’s team on campus has nothing but good things to say about her.
“I’m sure everyone in IT could find something nice to say about Ellee,” Ryan Hovey, applications systems analyst at Simpson, wrote. “The effort she puts into being on time, productive, and fun all at once made it a simple decision to promote her to a team leader. We are very lucky she accepted.”
After graduation, Mortensen hopes to work as a data analyst for a professional baseball team or company, a goal that seems well within reach given her impressive college career. But more notably, she hopes to be an example to other women interested in the industry.
“I hope to be a female role model in sports analytics,” Mortensen said. “I want to show the young girls and women that come after me that they can pursue this field and succeed in it.”