Awarding digital talent: Q&A with Anastasia Khomenko, data scientist

We are honoured to be?sharing a series of stories from our inspirational?@RightBrains?community!

? Anastasia Khomenko , data scientist at?KPN, shared a snapshot of her career journey to date, digital aspirations and how the RightBrains?Digital Talent award helped to enrich her career.?

-Tell us about your current role:?

I currently work as a Data Scientist, which means what I mostly do is build models. I need to know how to code in Python, but also as a data scientist, you need to interact a lot with business to understand what the business needs, and what the business wants, how they want those models to be built, and what are their requirements. I need to talk a lot to the business and to marketing, to understand their needs and how I can help them.??

-Have you always wanted to be in digital technology? What attracted you to the field??

My education is in business administration. So I actually wanted to go into marketing, but I quickly understood that I don't really like it -- and I was also thinking of starting my own business, but I did not know in which field I could start?in. At some point, I realised I liked to code as I did coding for a few courses at university; and I realised I loved programming, math and all the computational stuff like statistics and that’s when I knew I wanted to move more into the digital field with computers. Then, through self-learning, I learned how to code, programme, and leverage statistical and data science. And that is how I got into that field! ?

-As an up-and coming leader and role model, what do you hope will change for the next generation of women??

I hope that this topic will not be as hot anymore. Because if it won't be, it would mean we have achieved equality and women in tech and leadership are a norm. And if it becomes a norm, this topic will become way less important on its own.?

-How has the RightBrains community and winning the award enriched your career??

RightBrains helped me a lot to see how many women are actually interested in technology. There are so many women that I can connect with and that I can learn from, and that is what I have been doing with RightBrains since I won the award. Winning the award has helped me with my exposure within the community and connecting to all these women has been very interesting. I have learned a lot from different women located in different parts of The Netherlands. RightBrains has helped me a lot in advancing my career.??

-Why do you think communities with like-minded women like RightBrains are important??

I think such a community is important as a lot of women usually tend to doubt themselves, and think they are not worthy and are scared to start new things and start a new career. I think having a community like RightBrains, shows that there are so many women in tech. A lot of them do not have the right education to get into tech, and still managed to have a career in?digital technology. Also, there are women that have struggled in their careers in tech and finding your role model and finding help from women who had the same struggles, has a positive impact as it allows women to be more sure of themselves.??

-What is your advice to women who are unsure of where to start their digital journey??

My advice would be to follow your heart and not your head. So, if there is something you want, there is something you believe you would be good at, if there is something you believe you would be interested in, just go for it. Find a way that it is easiest for you to dive into, for example, I found data science very interesting and I started to learn about the subject through online courses and maybe for you would be better to follow an official course from people who already have that career so you can get more insight about the career you want to go into. Do not hesitate to take the first step and if you feel like you will be successful in a particular role then just go for it. You will never know unless you try and if you don’t try, you might regret it.??