I started my career at a UK-owned start-up which specialized in energy price risk management. As with all start-ups we needed to do a bit of everything and thus I learned how to program in Visual Basic. One of my pricing models sold for £60k to a paper manufacturer but the majority of my models were designed for internal use for scaling our operations. I was mainly self-taught but was heavily influenced by some of my more experienced colleagues who had IT background.
In 2010 I joined Morgan Stanley as a Data Quality Manager within the Client Reference Data space. I not only switched industries from energy to financial services but also made a functional move from being in a customer-facing role previously to become more of an internal project manager. My current role involves a lot of interaction between the business and IT, e.g. translating business / regulatory requirements into specifications for IT, understanding the business impact of poor reference data like missing or incorrect attributes etc.
My current role required acquiring new skills especially on the database side. However, learning & career opportunities do not stop there. With the advent of “big data” I believe there is an increasing need for people who can understand business, have an analytical mind, are either technologists or have an aptitude for technology and who can also communicate well to influence change.
On a personal note, I spent a year in Bratislava in 2002 with a Central & Eastern European scholarship program. The original grant was for 4 months but I enjoyed myself so much that I ended up staying an entire year. Therefore, I’m particularly glad I continue to have a link to Slovakia through participating in the „Aj Ty v IT“ program.“