My background is unconventional. I'm the son of a Nigerian diplomat who grew up across four continents (Sweden, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Vietnam, USA). Being a perpetual outsider taught me to read behavioral patterns across cultures—to see what others miss when they're too embedded in one context.
I’m a behavioral scientist.
That skill—pattern recognition in human behavior—became my career. I started in behavioral science and organizational psychology. For years, I helped companies understand WHY people do what they do through surveys, interviews, and qualitative research. But I kept running into a limitation: behavioral science explains the "why," but it doesn't scale. You can interview 100 people to understand motivation, but you can't interview 100,000.
I’m a data scientist.
That's where data science came in. Machine learning lets you find patterns in millions of data points. Natural language processing lets you analyze thousands of customer feedback entries. Predictive analytics lets you forecast what will happen months in advance. But here's what most data scientists miss: they can find patterns, but they don't know WHY those patterns exist or HOW to change them.
I’m a storyteller.
That's my edge. I combine:
Technical proficiency (Python, ML, NLP, statistical modeling)
Behavioral expertise (15 years understanding human motivation)
Intervention design (knowing which levers actually change behavior) I build the model AND design the solution.
I’m committed to helping you use your difference to make a difference.
FULL BIO
Tayo Rockson is a behavioral data scientist who makes data human.
The son of a Nigerian diplomat, Tayo grew up across five countries and four continents—Nigeria, Sweden, Burkina Faso, Vietnam, and the United States—learning to translate between cultures before he knew it was a skill. Today, he translates between data and people.
Tayo spent 15 years consulting with Fortune 500 companies, helping organizations connect culture and behavior to business outcomes.
He currently serves as Business Intelligence Analyst and People Practices Lead at DPR Construction, where he's helping a 12,000+ employee-owned company make smarter workforce decisions through behavioral science and predictive analytics.
Tayo is the author of Use Your Difference to Make a Difference (Wiley), which explores how outsider perspectives drive better pattern recognition and problem-solving. He has spoken at TEDx three times, with over 250,000 combined views, and served on the Rutgers Big Data Advisory Board. He recently completed an AI/ML certification from UT Austin McCombs School of Business.
He writes The Behavioral Data Scientist, a weekly newsletter about making data human—helping people analytics professionals turn insights into action.
His mission: championing people through data.
