Mahana Mansfield, VP science, Deliveroo

Describe your career to date

After finishing my PhD in maths and retiring as an international judo athlete, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I found myself at Ocado, specialising in consumer facing algorithms, including personalisation and recommendation engines, and getting an excellent grounding in what would later be called data science.

After Ocado, I spent some time at the Guardian, where I was head of data science, helping them to understand more about their most loyal readers and what type of content they were interested in.

I moved to Deliveroo in 2017, at an exciting time for the company, and was intrigued about how much there was to learn in the online food delivery space. My time here has been a real highlight of my career to date, as I’ve been able to help Deliveroo make exponential improvements to its product offering for consumers, riders, and partners.

Today, I look after our whole data and science organisation, which underpins every corner of our marketplace. We use data to help Deliveroo make difficult decisions, balancing the needs and interests of the three sides of our marketplace (riders, partners and consumers) to do the best possible thing for all involved. In addition to making sure my organisation is running effectively, my role allows me to play an active role in solving some of our most challenging business problems.