“My advice for anyone who isn’t sure if a STEM career is for them, or if they can do it is to give it a try.  Accept any help and learn from experts around you. ”

How did you find your way into tech?

My post-school career started in a contact centre, from where I moved to a marketing role and was lucky enough to complete a professional certificate in management which helped me fall back in love with study.

My course tutor suggested I look into a 6Sigma qualification and that is where my love of data began.  I have always been interested in ‘why’ things happen and understanding that data was a great way to get to the root cause made me want to learn to pull my own data, I learned to code and from there my interest in coding, data warehousing, and databases was born.

Building a strong data culture is a gateway to making meaningful change to help improve any organisation and it starts with a tiny piece of code.

Tell us a little about your work

I guess you could call me an unlikely analyst.  I always thought my career would be focused on languages and books; when I was little I wanted to be a librarian and have always been happiest when surrounded by books.

In high school my grades weren’t high enough to allow me to sit Higher Maths – which I now find funny because it’s something that forms a key part of my role every day.

I studied English at university and my careers officer at school had pointed me towards nursing and teaching as potential professions, which maybe says more about the bias or opinions back then than it does about me.

What advice would you offer?

My advice for anyone who isn’t sure if a STEM career is for them, or if they can do it, is to give it a try.  Accept any help and learn from experts around you.

Never let anyone tell you can’t do it, with enough effort and hard work, you can do anything.

I suffer frequently from imposter syndrome, but then I remember they (teachers) told me I wasn’t smart enough to do maths, and I proved them wrong.  So can you.