Darron Bunt

I spent years on both sides of higher ed marketing — first inside institutions, where I got deep into paid media and admissions analytics, and then inside agencies, where I built analytical frameworks for dozens of clients.

By the end, I knew what the field was missing. And I knew why it was so hard to fix from inside.

I'm a data strategist. Most people in this space come at it from the numbers side and then add qualitative texture later. I come at it the other way. My first master's degree is in Sociology, with a focus on discourse and narrative analysis — understanding what language actually does and who it serves. My MS in Data Analytics came second — and it serves as the infrastructure that makes the qualitative work scalable.

This work isn't about p-values and t-scores — it's about knowing what questions to ask, reading the patterns that exist in the data, and making sense of what that means. The interpretation is the work.

The frameworks I've built started as patterns. Problems I kept watching surface across institutions and agencies: places where standard tools don't capture what's actually happening and where things quietly go off the rails. For me, creating a framework is the way to put a spotlight on a problem and give the structure needed to not have to start from zero every time.

When someone reads one and recognizes a problem they've been living with but couldn't put a finger on before? That's the moment I built them for.

But the frameworks aren't the full scope of what I do — they're an entry point and the start of a conversation. Every project starts with questions: about your pain points, how they manifest on your campus, and what you hope to accomplish. It's only with that understanding of your current state that I'll start to build out the project structure to match.

That structure can take a lot of different shapes. My portfolio includes machine learning models to diagnose email deliverability failures, causal inference work to measure whether digital campaigns were actually driving outcomes, custom metrics built to address situations where standard ones fall short, and dashboards built to answer "so what" instead of just "what". The through-line across all of it? Ask questions, figure out which ones to answer, and build solutions teams are empowered to use — not a report that sits on a shelf.

A bit more about me: I grew up in Canada, spent over a decade in non-profit sport management, and relocated to Massachusetts in 2019. My background also includes training in strategic communications, digital strategy, and public relations — disciplines that inform how I approach analysis and how I translate findings into language that institutional leaders can actually use. I think in frameworks and through-lines, and my work tends to surface patterns in places most analysis doesn't go.

I went independent because the work I want to do is hard to execute inside an agency or on an institutional staff. Agencies want long-term retainers. Institutions want someone to absorb the urgency without challenging the strategy. I want to work with clients who actually want to understand — who will read the analysis, push back on the findings, and use it to make different decisions.