sNAPAshots: Matt Stoffer

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Transcript

Interviewer 0:06
Welcome to sNAPAshots: conversations with professional, practicing, and applied anthropologists.

0:12
[On screen text] Matt Stoffer, Data Scientist, NextPoint Group

Matt Stoffer 0:22
So my name is Matt Stoffer. My title, see, currently I am a data scientist. More generally, I’m a federal contractor, and I’ve held a number of different positions within that framework. So, I’ve been a threat analyst, I’ve been a cyber threat analyst, an intelligence analyst, and again, currently a data scientist.

Interviewer 0:49
[On screen text] How dod you get interested in anthropology?

Matt Stoffer 0:49
My main subfield is socio-cultural. I started in undergrad as a biology and psychology major, and I had always been interested in medicine, I, I kind of had the idea that I wanted to be something like something like Doctors Without Borders, I didn’t know what that was at the time, but that’s what interested me, and I had to take an introduction to anthropology class as part of a, as part of my general education requirements, and when I mentioned to the professor that that’s the kind of work I was interested in doing, he suggested that I look into medical anthropology, and then at that point I changed my major to anthropology, ended up going to graduate school for, for a focus on medical anthropology, and kind of expanded out into sociocultural, more generally from there

Interviewer 1:46
[On screen text] How has the Anthropological mindset ehanced your contribution to your workplace?

Matt Stoffer 1:46
I would say probably the most, and this is maybe an overarching theme, but one of the one of the most useful aspects or perspectives from anthropology for me has been the ability to think with multiple perspectives, and you know, getting into cultural relativism from that, but thinking from multiple perspectives has very, has been very useful in a number of different ways, you know, for example, oftentimes in in offices that I’ve worked in, I kind of become a hub for whatever the general activity of that office, it ought to translate across different organizational barriers, or use the jargon from multiple different groups to to accomplish something, so I, I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I find that a lot of anthropologists end up in that position, they become a hub for for the workflow of an office.

Interviewer 2:43
[On screen text] How has Anthropology been particularly useful in addressing challenges you have encountered in your work?

Matt Stoffer 2:43
I don’t identify myself as an anthropologist, I don’t use that as a job title or anything like that, and I never have in my 12 or so years of professional experience, but I bring it with me in implicit ways, and it, it comes up all the time. It’s interesting in a way. I don’t even notice that I do it. Where I notice it is when other people, other people that are not anthropologists, don’t understand why or how I’ve done something, and I know a lot of anthropologists have this experience where we’re non-anthropologists look at us like we’re we’re sorcerers or something like that, you know that it’s all magic, but it’s not, it’s just a different way of thinking, and this kind of gets at another that I think might come later, you know. What, what would I tell…What did grad school not tell me, or what did, what did professors not tell me? And it’s kind of this, this idea that we, we come to the table with a different set of perspectives. I mean, a certain colleague of ours says that we see in technicolor that’s that’s not normal, and that’s what they don’t tell you in grad school, so other other people, non-anthropologists, will look at us like we’re like we have three heads or something like that, because we come up with these insights that they have not considered, but it’s just because we think from multiple, multiple perspectives.

Interviewer 4:30
[On screen text] What Anthropological skills do you use in your work?

Matt Stoffer 4:30
I mean, there’s a few things: one is ethnography, using that as a, as a tool to learn about the environment that you’re working in, participant observation, a lot of times we’re going to be, we are going to be coming into skills that we’re not particularly familiar with. And participant observation is a very useful tool for for getting up to speed on what that office is actually trying to accomplish. It also helps, again, my position as a data scientist, currently, you know, data science is a useful skill set, but it only takes you so far. When you find, when you find anomalies, I mean, data science can tell you about the who, the what, the where, and the when, but it can’t tell you why, and it can’t tell you how that’s where the anthropology comes in, so you know, as a data scientist, when I find some kind of anomalous thing within the data, it gives me a point to look at, but then I have to go talk to the analyst to understand why that happened, and that’s where participant observation also comes in, you learn by observing what they do and understanding again the nuances of, of how that thing occurred.

Interviewer 5:48
[On screen text] What advice would you give to future anthropologists seeking roles in professional, practicing, and applied fields?

Matt Stoffer 5:48
When in doubt, just do ethnography. Do you do what you’ve been trained to do? That’s the, that’s the best way that I can approach it. In doing ethnography, you’re going to learn about the power structures of the office, or whatever environment that you’re working in. You are going to learn about the kinds of questions that you can and cannot ask, and ethnography is something that we’re all trained to do. Is, as student anthropologists, we talk about, you know, the big bubble right now is AI. There’s a lot that anthropologists can do there. There’s a lot that anthropologists can, can say there. There’s a lot of work for us in those, in those places. When you talk about the medical field, huge opportunities for practicing anthropologists. When you talk about, I mean, the legal field, when you talk about banking, I mean, what I do as a federal contractor, there’s so many spaces that anthropologists can work in, and I think up until recently we have kind of relegated ourselves into small corners of other professional worlds, so many students going through anthropology, they don’t necessarily see that the number of academic positions that are available to them is shrinking and that practicing anthropology is becoming more and more of a, of really the avenue for students coming out of anthropology, and I suppose in some ways there’s there’s a perception that you know anthropology is a dying field. I don’t see that at all. I think there is more and more opportunity within anthropology, as as professionals and as practitioners. There are so many ways that anthropology can provide useful perspectives in so many different, different industries and different, different, different milieu. So, yeah, when in doubt, just do ethnography.

Credits 8:01
PRODUCED BY Niel Tashima Cathleen Crain Joshua Liggett DIRECTED BY Reshama Damle EDITED BY Reshama Damle ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE VIA PEXELS BY: VLADA KARPOVICH, THIRDMAN, PAVEL DANILYUK, TIMA MIROSHNICHICHENKO, HENRI MATHIUE-SAINT-LAURENT, GIORGIO TOMASSETTI, YAN KRUKAU, RDNE MUSIC VIA PIXABAY: “Fat Chillin” by Lazy Chill Zone, “Early Morning Chill Hill Music” by PrettyJohn1, “Goog Night LoFi Cozy Chill Music” by Fassounds, “LoFi Girl” by Snoozy Beats

Credits 8:02
[On screen text] Like what you see. Let us know, find us at PracticingAnthropology.org, LinkedIn, meta, X, BlueSky and YouTube.

Credits 8:02
[On Screen Text] Many Thanks to NAPA’s Governing Council for supporting sNAPAshots. NAPA is a section of the Anthropological Association.

Volunteer Plug 8:02
[On Screen Images] Starbursts with the words: Social Media, Organization, Promotions, and Events. [On Screen Text] Want to volunteer with NAPA? We’d love to hear from YOU! Contact: ntashima@ltgassociates.com

AAP Plug 8:02
[On Screen Text] Stay connected with 40 Years of The Annals of Anthropological Practice. [On Screen Image] AAP Cover Page. [On Screen Text] https://practicinganthropology.org/communicate/submit-to-the-annals/

Interviewer 8:24
sNAPAshots

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