Louise Maynard-Atem, deputy director, data and insights, Government Digital Service

Describe your career to date

I’ve certainly gone way off-piste from my original career plan that I wrote when I was 18. According to that, I should be pushing for a chemistry professorship at university, ideally somewhere very warm. I recognised, probably mid-way through my PhD in materials chemistry, that what I really enjoyed was applying the scientific method to any and all problems.

I realised that by analysing data and leveraging mathematical techniques, I could inform my steps, and even make predictions on outcomes. That realisation led to the operational research fast stream programme after graduation, where I spent time deriving insights from data that would go on to inform policy-making decisions across the Department of Health and the Ministry of Defence.

I’ve continued in that same vein for the past ten years, and have sought to help organisations make more informed decisions across a number of sectors, including defence, financial services, identity verification and fraud detection. I think the fact that I’ve been able to work across a number of different, and seemingly unrelated sectors shows how universally important data skills are, and my ability to analyse, interpret and communicate what the data is saying has helped to guide these organisations to make better decisions both internally (management information and HR data) and externally (market entry and product/market fit).

In September of 2022, I decided to return to government, to my current position in GDS. Throughout the pandemic, I saw the importance and impact of leveraging data to build public understanding and ultimately drive better public services. My time in the private sector also meant I got to see first-hand the impact that advanced data exploitation can have. It’s a great privilege to be able to use my skills and experience to lead teams of brilliant data professionals in solving some of the most impactful (and difficult) problems through the use of data science, analytics and technology.