Will Sach, director of data strategy, News UK

What has been your career path to date?

I started my career working in Pathology, drawn to studying disease and its link to mortality. Science was my passion from an early age and the chance to unravel the many mysteries of the human body drove both my degree and career choices. Sadly, my career in Pathology came to an abrupt end after only a few short months when discovering I was allergic to the main chemical reagent I worked with. I was forcibly retired days later. 

With a Bachelor and Master of Science degree under my belt, I spent a summer contemplating my future. In the end, I opted for a career change after finding a database marketing company willing to take a chance on a forlorn science graduate. It was here I discovered that there was a new science emerging - one that revolved around understanding customers and their experiences, which I knew I wanted to be part of. In essence, I swapped studying humans for customers and their data.

In 2006, I heard of a company that was leading the way in customer science, dunnhumby, and its owners, Clive and Edwina Dunn. After joining as an insight and media consultant, I became fully immersed in the world of data and its potential for understanding customers. I spent nearly 13 years at dunnhumby, working in a range of insight and media, commercial and strategy roles where I learned about data, technology, people and processes. 

I began to feel a calling for taking my knowledge into a client-side role. An interesting role came up at News UK to swap industries and lead the data strategy and in 2018, I joined the team as client data officer on The Sun. Eighteen months later, I became director of data strategy, a role I continue to perform today.