ABOUT

Tell us who you are!

My name is Nina, I live in South London (Croydon) and I come from a mixed Afro-Arab heritage (mostly African). I am massively influenced by the many communities I've lived with (Croydon is the literal definition of cultural melting pots) and I love learning/experiencing new cultures.

I currently work as a Senior Data Analyst for a data consultancy and study Islamic Sciences part-time with Q-Iman.
I love seafood, especially grilled seafood and I have a soft spot for cheese cake and red-velvet cake.

So what do you actually do?

As a senior data analyst, my main responsibility is to help our clients make the most out of their data. That involves working with our clients to define what data they need and how they can use it to track their business performance, helping them set up the tracking where needed and converting that data into useful reports and visualisation tools.

A part of my role is to identify opportunities and recommendations such as suggestions to improve their customers' digital experience and sales opportunities. We use a variety of analytics tools and programming languages to collect and transform the data, and a mixture of dashboards and PowerPoint presentation to present our findings. Much of our job involves good written and verbal communication between technical and non-technical audiences.

What has your career path been?

I was initially set on becoming a doctor (surgeon to be more precise). I applied and got into medical school. Three years into my pre-clinical studies at Cambridge University I decided to leave it all together and explore other opportunities. It wasn't an easy decision and I spent several years trying to find my footing and figuring out what it was that I wanted to do.
I considered entrepreneurship, management consultancy, banking and HR but for some reason, none of these took off. I realised later that what was missing was strong interest on my part and an alignment with my strengths.

One thing I'd learnt from my experience with medicine was that I was most driven and motivated when working on something I found interesting and engaging.

I came to learn about careers in data and data analytics through coding meet-up groups and online learning courses. Whilst speaking to people in the industry, I found myself wanting to know more and understand how it all worked.

What is the best part of your job?

Hands down the best part of my job is getting to solve new / challenging problems. At the start of each project, we often receive a question or set of challenges our clients are facing and it's our job to figure out how to use the data available to arrive at a solution.

For me, the best part is breaking down the task into smaller parts and exploring the data and getting to grips with each part, then piecing it all together to arrive at a solution. Don't get me wrong, this part can also be the most frustrating, especially when the answer is not very clear but it's very satisfying when we figure out a solution.

What inspired you to do your job?

I discovered data analytics in my first year of employment and before that, I didn't know this field existed. I was attracted to the logical nature of the role, being able to think through each task and test each idea / opinion with quantitative measures. I like how broad the job was especially working consultancy side, you get exposed to different ways of working and often our role overlaps with other roles in the data field such as data engineering, data science, implementation specialist and business intelligence.

I was also very intrigued by the application of data in AI and the many opportunities that presented.

One piece of advice for someone starting in your role?

Take every experience and opportunity as a learning experience and always reflect on what you enjoyed out of each experience.

Looking back every experience I've had has taught me something valuable that I've tried to carry forward into my next role. With each job/project I've worked on, I've learnt the aspects of that role that I enjoy and wished to carry on doing and some aspects that I didn't enjoy and would prefer to have less of in the future.

Final words?

Take initiative, network and learn from every experience. Don't be afraid to experiment and learn from others/ find what works for you.

Check out Nina’s Twitter below!

DAY IN THE LIFE

I work 5 days a week from 9 am to 5:30 pm.

Typically my day starts with a few internal meetings where we discuss business processes, provide updates on current projects and review resource requirements. I then like to block out an hour or two to work on my project deliverables and this can vary massively depending on the client and the project itself.

At the moment I am working on an implementation project which means I need to gather business requirements from different parts of the clients business, distil them into a set of data requirements and define how we'll track them on a newly implemented website.

I am also working on a data visualisation project and my afternoon will most likely be spent reviewing client feedback and debugging any errors that have been identified. This involves reviewing our SQL queries and PowerBi logic to identify where the error is coming from and fix it. And with something like this I like to block out a solid chunk of time so I can get into a flow.

I then try to block out some time towards the end of the day to respond to emails and plan work for the next day.

That's a good, organised day. Most days I have a stream of messages and emails that need responding to ASAP, internal and external meetings spread across the day and chunks of focus time squeeze into the day for deliverable work.