CURRENT POSITION Lead Data Analyst, Denver Public Library DEGREE BS, Quantitative Psychology, University of California–Davis, 2019 FAST FACT When not working, Ayala can be found exploring trails with her rescue puggle, Artie; coming up with new themed food and drinks for movie nights; or competing in local speed puzzling competitions. FOLLOW linkedin.com/in/aileen-n-ayala; performance.envisio.com/dashboard/denverpubliclibrary4411; arcgis.com/home/user.html?user=AileenAyala Photo by Kalen Jesse Photography Co.

Stats and Services

Aileen Ayala was a math kid and assumed she would go into market research—but she also grew up feeling the library was her “safety net,” and valued volunteer work. The data analyst role at Denver Public Library (DPL) merges those interests and her degree in quantitative psychology, letting her dig into the “people impact” of library stats. 

Ayala uses geographical analysis of city information to guide library decision-making through community asset mapping. She first collaborated on an app for DPL’s Youth Services team using census data and Denver Public Schools maps for insights on the walking distance between schools and libraries, whether there’s a sidewalk, or where after-school youth programs exist, for example. 

Building on that, she developed a tool using a comprehensive geographic information system (GIS) to pull from census and library usage data, plus community asset information, to inform DPL’s service planning process. Ayala visits each branch to teach staff how to use it, and her team built an app for employees to share reports across DPL. “I feel strongly that our branches know their neighborhoods best,” she says. “Problem-solving collaboratively, that’s my favorite thing.” 

An internal pay equity project took Ayala two years to develop, working with Denver’s Office of Human Resources and other municipalities to get city job classification data for comparison. The first round, for shelvers and clerks, resulted in 24 percent increases for more than 200 employees. The team then expanded analysis to the rest of the organization—a comprehensive undertaking that involved building an evaluation tool to measure every employee’s updated job description, which managers then tested for accuracy. “To have managers and employees advocate for themselves made a really positive impact on the whole process,” Ayala says; it resulted in compensation adjustments for 76 percent of DPL’s staff.