2025 Year in Review

A recap of noteworthy things that happened in 2025. Image from Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

This year was very different compared to my first three years of consulting. My book is now published so instead of spending a significant portion of my time writing, I was able to commit to full-time consulting work. I also shifted my focus outside of work to spending more time with my family, and to being healthy (shout out to Shannon Pileggi for inspiring me and to my dad for motivating me to start going to a gym). While this meant I had less time to do other things I enjoy, like writing blog posts, there were still many noteworthy things that happened in 2025. A recap of some of those things are below.

1. I worked with 9 different clients on data management projects.

I feel extremely fortunate to have been able to keep working as a freelance data management consultant this year. A lot of my work is funded by clients who have federal grants so I was uncertain how the year would go.

This year I took on a few new clients and continued working with several existing clients. My projects ranged from curating datasets for public sharing, reporting, and dissertations, to developing data governance procedures, to building REDCap data collection tools, to consulting on data documentation. I also provided another 8 hour data management best practices workshop to a team. I received some great feedback from that training.

The workshop was fantastic. Crystal is so knowledgeable about data management throughout the research lifecycle. Our team is going to be so much better off with the knowledge and skills we have acquired as a result of the workshop. It would have saved me so much time to have had this during my graduate training!

2. I revamped my website and got a new logo.

This was very exciting for me. I am really bad about putting off “administrative” types of tasks but this year I prioritized moving my website to Quarto and getting an actual logo for my business. Neither of these things would have been possible without the help of Jadey Ryan, who I hired to help me do both! Jadey did an amazing job moving my site to Quarto and helping me troubleshoot all of the tedious issues I ran across. She also made my beautiful new logo which I am now using in as many places as possible! Definitely hire Jadey if you need assistance with either of these tasks.

Figure 1: New business logo.

3. I started the RDM Weekly Newsletter.

This year, rather than writing more blog posts, I decided to put my effort into disseminating the many data management resources that already exist. While I still hope to find more time to blog myself, there are so many great resources that people have already shared over the years and I wanted to make sure those were getting into the hands of researchers who may not know about them. In July of this year, I quickly put together a logo and sent out the first issue of RDM (Research Data Management) Weekly. The newsletter has been so fun to put together each week and within the first 6 months it already has almost 600 subscribers!

4. Data Management in Large-Scale Education Research received an award.

I was so excited to learn that Data Management in Large-Scale Education Research, published last year by CRC Press, was nominated for a SIPS (Society for the Improvement of Psychological Sciences) Commendation. SIPS Commendations are a way to give recognition to projects that support the SIPS Mission, including (but not limited to) contributions that are not typically recognized by professional societies (e.g., blog posts, podcasts). I was very grateful that the book received this recognition.

5. I contributed to two Nature articles.

This year I was asked to contribute to two different Nature articles. I felt honored to be able to provide advice, alongside the other thoughtful opinions in these articles. While I have had documentation templates featured in a previous article, this was the first year I’ve been asked to provide commentary on data management related topics. The first article focused on how researchers can update their data sets over time while maintaining reproducibility. The second article focused on how to best work with spreadsheets for the purpose of data collection/entry and analysis.

6. I continued co-organizing two community groups.

• POWER Data Management Hub (4th year co-organizing)
  • All of my co-organizers returned to help make 2025 another great year. Thank you to Gizem Solmaz-Ratzlaff, Rebekah Jacob, and Callie Little! 🙏
  • We held 4 informal meetups this year to discuss data management issues in our work. For the second year in a row, one of these meetups included a dataset review where a member shared their de-identified data and gathered feedback on the organization, structure, and usability of that data.
  • We also held 4 invited presentations. All presentation slides can be found on our OSF page.
• R-Ladies St. Louis (5th year co-organizing)
  • All of my co-organizers stayed on to support the group this year, including Jenine Harris, Laura Rose, Mary Painter, and Shelly Cooper! 🙏
  • We held 5 meetups (including one in-person meetup) on various R programming topics. Recordings of all of our remote meetups can be found on our YouTube channel!

7. I returned to Vanderbilt to support the DMDS Workshop.

This was my second year as a faculty member for the Data Management for Data Sharing (DMDS) Workshop. This workshop, funded by NIH, has become something I look forward to every summer. I, and six other colleagues, have the great pleasure of teaching data management to small groups of developmental science researchers. We are currently recruiting participants for our 3rd cohort, so if you are interested and qualify, please consider applying. It’s a lot of fun and we’ve received great feedback from former participants!

Figure 2: On the left, Crystal Lewis presenting on data cleaning. On the right, all workshop faculty together.

8. I attended my first Posit Conference since 2022.

I was really excited to be back at Posit Conference this year. I attended a really great workshop (From R User to R Programmer), taught by Ian Lyttle and Emma Rand. I also attended lots of insightful talks, several of which I highlighted in my RDM Weekly newsletter. And equally as exciting and important, I was able to reunite with many of my rstats friends, as well as meet lots of new friends (or meet them in person for the first time)!

Figure 3: From left to right, Crystal Lewis, Luis D. Verde Arregoitia, and David Keyes at Posit Conference.

9. I created several freelancing resources.

This was a really tough year for many people. I tried my best to find ways to give back to those who found themselves without work this year. I spent a lot of time meeting with people who reached out and were looking to potentially transition into freelancing careers, either temporarily while they are on the job hunt or even permanently. I had dozens of coffee chats throughout the year and I am grateful to have met so many awesome people this way.

I also created a few tangible resources. One is the Data Consultants table, a searchable spreadsheet of data freelancers. This spreadsheet has a two-fold purpose. One it’s great for anyone who is looking for help with a variety of data-related tasks. And two, it’s really helpful if you are a freelancer and are looking for collaborators or for someone to refer your clients to for services you don’t provide. Anyone can be added to this spreadsheet by completing the form linked on the second tab.

The other resource I created is a Data Freelancing Resources list on GitHub. This list contains resources that may help answer common questions that freelancers have, such as how to find clients, how to decide what your service offering will be, or how much to charge.

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As for 2026, I honestly hope to continue doing more of the same. It’s never certain, but I’m hopeful that I can continue doing my data management consulting work full-time. With that said, if you are looking for data management help, you can always contact me here.

I also want to continue delivering the RDM Weekly newsletter as long as it seems useful to others. I plan to continue working with my co-organizers to host meetups for both R-Ladies St. Louis and the POWER Data Management Hub. I also hope to get back to blogging. I have a large backlog of topics I’ve been wanting to write about so fingers crossed I can make some time for that. Last, I’ll keep dreaming about finding time to write that Data Cleaning for Data Sharing Using R book that I’ve been talking about for two years now. 😄

Last but not least, I want to continue supporting others in any way I can (i.e., referrals, sharing job opportunities/connections/resources, sharing experiences, etc.). If you are a freelancer, data person, or researcher, and want to connect, please reach out!

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2026 is a great year for all of you! 🌟