REBECCA VICKERY
A JOURNEY
FROM DATA ANALYST TO DATA SCIENCE LEADER REBECCA VICKERY is an award-winning data science leader with more than 16 years of extensive experience in the field of data across diverse industries. A prolific writer, she has published over 100 articles on Medium, primarily dedicated to guiding others in starting their journey into the world of data science. Rebecca is also a sought-after speaker, having presented at numerous data conferences globally over the last few years. Currently, she directs her expertise towards leading a data team at EDF, where their primary focus is on developing machine learning models and conducting research to provide insights for targeted customer engagement.
M
y career in data started a long time before cloud computing had become established. Maintaining records of plant genome size at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew during my undergraduate placement in an on-premise Microsoft Access database, was very different from the work I’m currently doing running machine learning workloads on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Snowflake. However, it sparked a passion for data discovery, science and problem-solving that ultimately would lead to a career in data science.
EARLY CAREER Inspired by a birthday gift of a microscope at age ten, I developed a keen interest in science and nature from a
young age. As a result, I chose to study Molecular and Cellular Biology at university. An industrial placement year at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew involved early work with databases and writing basic code. After graduating from university in 2001, keen to further pursue programming, I took a trainee role in a media agency to learn front-end web development. Data analysis gradually became another part of my role at the agency as Google Analytics became established and clients had a desire to understand how their websites were performing. Finding a particular passion for analytics I applied for a role with an online travel retailer, Holiday Extras, where they were looking for someone to build a new web analytics practice.
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