Learn more about Laura's experience, from the time she applied to The Data School, to her career as a consultant at Accenture. Laura was part of Cohort 8 of The Data School London, which took place from February 2018 to June 2019.
Interviewed by Mel Niere | Edited by Vivian Ng and Laura Scavino
Before The Data School
Q: What brought you to The Data School? What factors influenced your decision to apply and ultimately join The Data School?
I discovered The Data School in 2017 through an email about a Meet and Greet and decided to just go and see what was all about. I was working as an analyst in a small marketing startup at the time, so I went after work. I remember there was a presentation by Andy Kriebel (Data School Head Coach) and Tom Brown (The Information Lab Managing Director). They spoke about a data analytics program which covered extensive training while also working as a consultant at clients.
I graduated from (MSc) International Business Management at Kent Busienss School in 2016 and had some experience with basic data transformation. I couldn't really find a career in technology or in data where they would teach me on the job, so I was quite interested in how they said you don't need to know everything when you apply to the Data School. I spoke to more people at the Meet and Greet, including Benedetta Tagliaferri (Culture & Inclusion Lead at The Information Lab). She's Italian, I’m Italian, so we connected straight away over pizza, typical stereotypical Italian. She told me, just add me on LinkedIn and send me your Tableau application. I thought, that's great, Italians help each other.
For my application, I used data I had collected for my International Business Management project on L'Oreal. Throughout the interview process many people were supporting me with ideas and feedback. Overall I felt it was a great learning opportunity. I integrated their feedback, looked at lots of videos and blogs online, and finally submitted the application.
I was offered a job and I decided to join the program as part of the DS8 cohort because I saw potential in what The Data School could teach me while enhancing my presentation skills and business acumen.
During The Data School
Q: What was your training experience like?
The initial 4 months of training were very intense. I had the opportunity to get trained by the Tableau Visionary Andy Kriebel amongst other Tableau Visionaries and Alteryx ACEs at the Information Lab. There were times when it was information overload, where you had classes after classes and then you had client work and then you learned how to do project management. I thought I was going back to University with an accelerator, learning and applying what I was learning on the job.
Me and my cohort were frequently publishing articles and blogs about what we learned, then there was a project week, then a dashboard week, so it felt like we were always learning something new. When we were not training, we were taking exams, certifications, updating our Tableau Public profiles. Training was intense but was great; I was always very, very excited.
I remember going to recruitment events and soon realised that it was not only a job but actually part of me. “If you pick a job that you like, you never work one day in your life.”
Q: How did your placements at The Data School enhance your skills and knowledge?
My first placement was at JLL, a real agent management company in London. My second placement was at BCG, a consulting firm. My third one was at PwC, so again, consulting and auditing. Three placements, all very different.
At JLL, I was responsible for a large data migration and transformation prograusing Alteryx. I still meet some of the managers at various conferences, and they still tell me, the work I have done is still being used. I still remember how challenging and rewarding it was from day one to work with senior leadership and engineers to use Alteryx in the boardroom to make decisions. I soon realized I was not in the meeting to listen in or take notes but I was there to use my technical skills to solve a large business challenge with the team, as a Consultant.
We were making decisions on how to plug that data together to actually do what they called prevention engineering, to try to predict when a lightbulb was going to go off. Then they could do predictive maintenance before the lightbulb would go off in an office. It was a very, very intense placement, and I learned a lot.
Then I went to BCG, which was a very different type of placement. I was the consultant helping other consultants create dashboards and workflows, while also responsible for delivering training across Europe. Every month I was going somewhere else for a week, to France, to Spain, delivering Tableau and Alteryx training. Basically everyone who joined BCG between 2018 to 2019—and 2020-2022 as well because I continued doing training when I joined the Core Team at TIL—everybody who joined BCG at that time knew my name because I was delivering those training sessions. It was very intense for them because they had a week’s worth of training and had a project that they had to present back at the end of that week. I learned and traveled a lot with that placement, and I seriously loved it. I went to Paris, I don't know how many times, within that six months.
Finally, during my third placement, at PwC, I learned another skillset, which was more related to the Center of Excellence, where the client would ask me questions on how they could use Alteryx, Tableau, and other technologies. If they were stuck in a specific scenario, I would try to help them overcome those challenges. I was also delivering small projects for consultants and building POC (proof of concept) with partners at PwC, so it was a very broad role.
I never said I wanted to go into a certain industry or do a certain type of placement. I was always open for anything and the three placements were all different, all unique. At the end of the three placements, somebody helped me realize that I had three big companies in my CV, just by working at The Information Lab for the initial 2 year program.
After The Data School
Q: How did The Data School and The Information Lab serve as a launchpad for your data analytics career?
After I finished my placements at The Data School, I was hired straight away as a Core Consultant at The Information Lab UK, where I stayed for the next two years. It was like an extension of my placements; I continued supporting customers, taking on new clients, developing new training materials. The first year, I was mainly responsible for training, so I developed training for companies like BCG, EDF, Permira and Insight Investment. Then, I shifted into a role where I was also running client workshops on their data strategy.
That's when I discovered my passion for customer success and started working with Emma Whyte (Head of People) quite closely, developing our customer success function within the UK. We worked through the customer acquisition lifecycle from pre-sales to post-sales support. We also focused on enterprise customers by answering questions such as: How can we drive client adoption through Tableau and Alteryx? How can you implement the technology? How can you build the data strategy, data culture in an organization?
It got me thinking about how much I loved customer success—which is also how I arrived at Accenture two years ago. They reached out to me, saying, “We see you doing great work at The Information Lab. You do loads with customer success, can you help us build a customer success function here at Accenture?” The Information Lab gave me the confidence and skill set to take on my next challenge..
I'm now a Client Relationship Manager at Accenture, working on strategic alliances and partnerships. I am the Tableau Partner Manager across EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), and I lead the EMEA relationships for Alteryx as well, so I think I found my role within my specialty around different opportunities. I do pre-sales to post-sales, and so the customer success side is there, my technical side is there as well, and I combine a bit of everything else to learn a bit more of what else is out there with other technologies, how we can best position the right technology for the right use case to customers. I also get to go to conferences, like last week. (Editor’s note: Laura Scavino spoke at Dreamforce 2023.)
The Data School really helped me shape my career to where it is now. I went from studying International Business Management to learning specific technical skills and developing a network of professionals that shaped not only my career but also my safety net in the UK. In the last 7 years I have worked with a variety of large customers and I'm always thankful to The Data School for the opportunities they gave me and the ideas they brought me.
Advice About The Data School
Q: What advice would you give to individuals considering applying to The Data School?
Do your research, look at blogs and videos. If you type “Data School Tableau Alteryx” into Google, you will get hundreds, if not thousands, of articles that are very useful. Sometimes even colleagues from a Center of Excellence say they refer to The Data School website for advice on how to build a specific dashboard.
It's a fun experience. There is no CV involved, you don't have to do a cover letter. Apply to The Data School. If you get in, get the most out of it that you can because two years go quite fast.