People & Paths

Strategic reflections on careers, leadership and professional evolution in data science. In this section: Career profiles

Our People & Paths content is in development. Interested in contributing to Real World Data Science? Check out our call for contributions.

Screengrab of video showing Jonathan Gillard and Penny Holborn in conversation.

Data science and AI in the public sector: An interview with ONS’s Penny Holborn
AI
Data
Skills
Public sectorv

Penny Holborn, head of faculty for the Office for National Statistics Data Science Campus, talks to Jonathan Gillard about keeping up with new developments, the value of…

Jonathan Gillard
Mar 27, 2024

Screengrab of video interview showing Matthew Jones on the left and Jonathan Gillard on the right. Screengrab is overlaid on a laptop background.

Data science and AI in financial services: An interview with Nationwide’s Matthew Jones
AI
Communication
Skills
Financial services

Matthew Jones, head of decision science and analytical innovation at building society Nationwide, talks career path, data science tools and skills, and the role of AI in…

Jonathan Gillard
Mar 21, 2024

Photo of Niclas Thomas.

‘I fell in love with math, really, and fell into data science because of that’
Leadership
Management
Communication

A passion for solving mathematical problems led Niclas Thomas to a PhD in machine learning and then a career in data science in the retail sphere. Now head of data science…

Brian Tarran
Oct 4, 2023

Photo of Albert Lee. Photo supplied by Albert Lee, used with permission.

‘Living my identity takes courage. It is the same courage necessary to start a new business’
Consulting
Leadership
Econometrics
Sampling
Machine learning

Albert Lee, the founding partner at Summit Consulting, describes his career journey – from mathematics and economics at university to the birth of data science and building…

Brian Tarran
Jun 28, 2023

Photo of Claire Morton. Photo supplied by Claire Morton, used with permission.

‘I was inspired by the power that numerical data have to tell stories and promote policy change’
Education
Research
Policy
Mentoring
Statistical literacy

Claire Morton is an undergraduate student at Stanford University. In this Q&A, Claire explains how a high school job in a cell biology lab led to college studies in…

Brian Tarran
Jun 28, 2023

Photo of Chanuki Seresinhe. Photo supplied by Chanuki Seresinhe, used with permission.

‘Once I started to see what was possible with data science, there was no going back’
Internet
Real estate
Leadership
Statistics
Stakeholder engagement

Chanuki Seresinhe is head of data science at Zoopla and Hometrack. This is her career story so far – from researching beautiful places to helping web users buy, sell and…

Brian Tarran
Jun 20, 2023

Black and white portrait photo of Jasmine Holdsworth. Still from Real World Data Science video interview.

‘For me, data science is about bridging the gap between business requirements and the data that businesses have’
Data analysis
SQL
R
Bootcamps
Education

Jasmine Holdsworth ‘fell in love’ with data science while employed as a data analyst at Stack Overflow. Now working as a data scientist at Expedia Group, she explains how…

Brian Tarran
May 24, 2023

3D render of a conceptual visualisation of large language models by artist Tim West. Photo by Google DeepMind on Unsplash.

Large language models: Do we need to understand the maths, or simply recognise the limitations?
Large language models
AI
Communication
Regulation

Do we need to understand the inner workings of large language models before we use them? Or, is it enough to simply teach people to recognise that model outputs can’t always…

Brian Tarran
May 18, 2023

Photo of ChatGPT homescreen, by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash.

How is ChatGPT changing data science?
Large language models
AI
Skills
People

We sit down with the Royal Statistical Society’s Data Science and AI Section to hear how large language models are becoming part of the data science toolkit, and to consider…

Brian Tarran
May 11, 2023

Black and white portrait photo of Sami Rahman. Photo supplied by Sami Rahman, used with permission.

‘I always thought someone like me couldn’t work in data, let alone data science’
Publishing
Data engineering
Data strategy
Machine learning

Sami Rahman, head of data engineering and data platform at Penguin Random House, parlayed a psychology degree into a data science career – inspired by a talk on machine…

Brian Tarran
Apr 24, 2023

A crowd of people talking, with speech bubbles representing the different voices, digital art. Image created by Real World Data Science using Microsoft Bing Image Creator.

The politics of performance measurement
Problem definition
Stakeholder communication
Relationship management

Funding decisions, particularly for projects in the public sector, should be informed by data on what works and what doesn’t. But performance assessment is rarely…

Noah Wright
Apr 18, 2023

Black and white portrait photo of Tamanna Haque.

‘Data science challenges you to keep learning – there’ll always be new advances in the field’
Automotive
Analytics
Leadership
Machine learning

Tamanna Haque, lead data scientist at Jaguar Land Rover, shares her route into data science: from pursuing a maths degree at Manchester to analysing vehicle data for a major…

Brian Tarran
Mar 28, 2023
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