For as long as I can remember I have had a love of numbers and words. As a kid I would while away long journeys with a book of logic puzzles or hanjie. I spent many a rainy afternoon on caravan holidays playing Boggle with my Mum. At Sixth Form I added A-Level Further Maths and GCSE Italian to my set of qualifications via evening courses. Yes, I am that geek!
When it came to university, I chose the path of words over numbers, graduating with First Class Honours in Interpreting & Translating (French and Russian) from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. I had ambitions to be a conference interpreter in Brussels or Geneva, but in the end a special person meant that Edinburgh would remain my home for a while longer. With a vibrant life sciences sector in the central belt of Scotland I pivoted into a career in clinical research, bringing my passion for words and numbers into roles as diverse as Contract and Budget Negotiation, Proposal Writing, Clinical Trial Intelligence and Feasibility, Commercial Insights and Trial Diversity Analytics. As I enter my 18th year in the industry, delivering valuable data products to business analysts and decision makers has become my passion.
My approach to data analytics is a lot like my approach to translating a document from French into English. Early in my career I realised that data was another language; one that I could translate into insights that decision makers could act on. I needed the help of some tools like R, SQL, Power BI and Tableau to manage the process of translation, and so began my journey of learning and practising the art of data translation.