Emma Wicks, head of editorial insight and analytics, The Telegraph

What has been your career path to date?

I started my career as a data analyst at a customer-centric consultancy, helping clients in a variety of industries to understand their consumers’ behaviour. This really set the theme for my career around the importance of putting the customer first and how data can be the key to achieving this.

Wanting to be closer to the solutions we were suggesting, I moved to in-house analytics teams at Marks & Spencer then the John Lewis Partnership. This allowed me to see more of the business impact data can have and be part of strategic conversations. It was also interesting to compare customer behaviour at seemingly similar businesses and how different approaches can lead to very different outcomes.

I’ve always enjoyed being part of the decision-making process and John Lewis offered me a unique chance to move internally to become a product manager on its credit card team. With no prior financial or product experience, this was a challenging, but rewarding move. Here I got closer to marketing, operations, customer experience, in-store teams and compliance to understand my previous stakeholders’ challenges. Bringing increased data knowledge to them showed the power it can have and how more is possible if this understanding is shared. This was one of the most valuable experiences that has helped shape how I now use data in partnership with business leaders to make decisions by combining our expertise.

In 2019, I came home to data analytics at the Telegraph, working directly with the newsroom to understand how our readers consume our journalism. This turned out to be the perfect move as the Telegraph is one of the most fast-paced organisations I’ve seen, with a real willingness to use data to help inform decision-making both in the day-to-day choices and strategic direction. Data has become central to the Telegraph’s successful subscriber-first strategy and it’s exciting to be part of our journey to 1 million subscriptions by 2023.