This month’s special guest is Alex West, Director of Research at Ann Arbor SPARK. Alex uses the power of data to tell a compelling story about the Ann Arbor region to support SPARK’s business attraction and retention efforts. Prior to joining SPARK, Alex held various roles in international economic development, most recently for the Department for International Trade (the economic development arm of the UK government), consulting for US/UK businesses in the cybersecurity and B2B software sectors. She is a California native and has lived and worked in Italy and the UK.

Alex holds a BA from UC Berkeley and received her MA in International Trade Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. She is currently completing an executive master’s degree in Information and Data Science through UC Berkeley.