Describe your career to date
After completing my BSc Hons in Computer Science and an MSc in Computational Methods and Imaging in Medicine, I came to a crossroads between embarking on an industry-sponsored PhD in Medical Imaging and Poisson statistics or moving into industry.
After careful consideration, I chose a consulting career, joining Accenture as a graduate. I spent 13 fantastic progressive career years with Accenture working globally on large-scale transformation projects in Asia, Europe, the UK, and Africa in Government, Comms & High Tech, and Banking sectors and throughout this my primary discipline and expertise was data engineering and analytics. Due to the large-scale programmes I worked on, I obtained experience across all parts of the delivery lifecycle and worked closely with business change teams. As a result of this, I was recognised as an SME in my field and was asked to conduct quality assurance reviews on data-led programmes across the EMEA region. As I progressed into senior management, I also gained fantastic experience in commercial, sales, and senior stakeholder management.
Overall, this broad experience gave me a unique foundation to move from consulting into industry and this was recognised by Travis Perkins PLC, the UK’s largest distributor of building materials, where I initially was recruited as Head of Data, before rising to Data Director in 2019. In 2020 I became Group Data and Insights Director, covering all data aspects: Data Privacy, Data Governance, Data and Analytics Engineering, and Data Science.
The Group has 20,000 colleagues and 1,400 branches, and its scale and size provides a great data and digital opportunity. I advocate using data for good and creating a data conscience in our organisation through education, cultural change, and innovation. In 2021, this enabled me to initiate the launch of our Data Academy and data apprenticeship to improve colleagues’ data and analytical skills and understanding and promote data as a key enabler for modernising our business and the construction. Due to the continually maturing data capability, we won a global Google Customer Award in Construction.
I am a BCS Fellow and a passionate sponsor and ally for the Women in Data network in our business. Last Year I was appointed as Non-Executive Director to the GS1 UK Supervisory Board, representing the UK construction sector in championing its data use, and in accelerating digitisation across our supply chains, and developing improved capabilities in sustainability reporting, building safety, and traceability. I am frequently invited to speak about our achievements, most recently at Google Next in London and the UK Construction Week at the NEC Arena in Birmingham.