Dec 29, 2016
Who is Romina?
The incomprehensible volume of data increasing every second, has brought about a new and exciting area for businesses, enabling them to embrace data- driven strategies. Romina’s great passion is to bring the best of data science and marketing worlds together to help businesses solve complex problems and acquire actionable insight assisting them in an informed decision making.
Romina is a data scientist with more than 8 years of experience in the consumer insight and analytics field. The focus of her work has included both hands-on experience and scientific research including development of statistical and predictive models/solutions to address businesses’ challenges and opportunities such as customer churn, acquisition, retention, segmentation and profiling, NPS modelling and tracking, market sizing as well as behavioral prediction in various industries including telecommunication, tourism/ aviation, consumer/retail and Banking/Finance.
Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Marketing with Multimedia (honours) and a Doctorate in Quantitative Marketing from the University of Queensland.
How did you find yourself working in Data?
My interest to the field of data analytics started when I was undertaking my PhD. I had to teach myself more advance statistics and the statistical modelling component of my PhD was the most joyful and exciting part of my PhD journey. From there I started consulting other students and co-authoring the statistical sections of publications with a number of academics, teaching in business statistics and then accepting a role in analytics in industry.
How has the data analytics world changed for you in the last few number of years?
In the last two years, I’ve seen myself going through lots of new learnings and professional developments- for me it’s been full on taking online courses in conjoint areas such as machine learning, expanding the network of professionals that I know in the field, to planning on starting a master in Big data in 2017.
What 3 pieces of advice would you give to any graduate considering a career in data analytics
- Develop a self-awareness and what are your weakness and strength as an analytics professional,
- Utilise and re-inforce your strengths while addressing and catching up on your weak points
- Always learn new things, then learn more and more!
How do you see the technology in data progressing over the next 5 to 10 years?
I see more and more organisations are starting to embed analytics in their operations, although many of them are not ‘data-ready’, overcoming these challenges, in interim we will see a number of organisations who have successfully utilised their data asset as a differentiator leading them to innovate and increase their growth/profit and the late adopters playing catch up.
How important do you see networking as a way to advanced your career and why?
Very important- I think it is not just about how great of a data scientist/analyst you are, but it is also about how you contribute to the analytics community- it is about building you rapport. On the flip side, knowing and learning about the right companies and teams to work with, can be much more informed through networking.
What new advancements are you most excited about within data?
I think I am most excited about what values big data can deliver if exploited properly- imagine how all historical data can be collated and utilised to find cure to some disease or combat/prevent terrorism or as such.
