WiDA Speaker Series: Building a Career in Data Analytics with Tina Okonkwo.

Hello, Data Nerd.

This is the WiDA Speaker Series, a segment of the Women in Data Africa Newsletter. Biweekly, Anoma interviews data professionals to get insight into what life is like for them, their onbecoming career story/ journey, insight on the “how” of building a career in tech, the careers they are building, challenges, ideologies, and more.

These series are prerecorded conversations from our Twitter Spaces, Virtual Community Meet-ups, interview features, and more.

Today, we will be hearing from Tina Okonkwo, a Mathematics graduate leading a successful career in Data Analytics, a tech content creator, teacher and founder of her data BootCamp. In this interview, she shares her journey into Tech, her love for soccer and K-drama, advice to everyone interested in building a career in Data Analytics, future concerns and more.

It is a great conversation, share, like, and leave comments if it resonates with you.

Thank you so much for joining us, Tina. I am such a fan of you and your work. You are one of the people in the Tech industry that I look up to, I am in awe of your journey and the work you do for the community. I am honoured to have you here.

Hi, Anoma. Thank you so much. This is news to me so it will not be like we are hyping ourselves up…, thank you for having me. It is such a pleasure to be here.

Thank you for honouring us once again. I have two icebreakers I’d love to ask you. The first one is “tell me two random facts about yourself that people do not know”.

Hmn, one of them will be I used to be a parent girl. I loved it, I used to model. The second one is I used to be part of a dance crew during my uni days.

I would not have guessed these. The second icebreaker question is “When you are not working on data projects", what are you doing"?

I am watching Kdrama, ????. If you follow me on Twitter you will know. I work remotely so I am always indoors. If I am not working, I am watching Kdrama.

What are you currently watching? And, can you share a recommendation for anyone who would love to get into watching Kdrama?

Presently, I am watching “Doctor Slump”, “The Last Paradox” and “Flex Cop”. I will recommend “Pent House”. It is my all-time favourite Kdrama.

Thank you. On to the conversation for today. Can you kindly introduce yourself detailing your journey into Tech?

For those who do not know me, my name is Tina Okonkwo and I am a Data Analyst. I work on analyzing data, extracting sentiment from them and solving problems with data. I have a mathematics background which is interestingly not why I decided to pursue a career in Data. I heard about data for the first time in 2015/2016 when I had just left university. In my quest to look for a job, I searched online for “where can a mathematics graduate work”. A couple of recommendations came including Data and AI but I did not decide then to start pursuing a career in Data. When NYSC came around, I worked as a “Customer Support” in my primary assignment. Afterwards, I moved into working as a “Business Development Rep” in an Oil and Gas firm; this role wasn’t what I wanted so I left. After a couple of months of unemployment, with the noise of “Data Science” getting louder, I decided to do my research again on “how to get started”. Thanks to Tina Huang this process was easier for me. I took her recommendations on what and how to learn DS to become a Data Scientist.

In March 2022, I applied for the “Ingressive for Good” scholarship and got it. The scholarship gave me access to the Datacamp platform. I started with Python and PowerBi; also working on projects every month. I also decided to build in public by posting my projects and progress on social media. The highlight of my career was in July 2022, when I scraped data off Twitter on the show “The Real Housewives of Lagos”, worked on building a dashboard and posted it on Twitter. This went on to single-handedly attract many recruiters to me, leading to me landing my current role.

Thank you so much, Tina. Your story is inspiring. Can you share what was the hardest thing/ experience about your journey?

Hmm, I remember when I started my journey I did not have a laptop. That was the most challenging thing for me. I was passionate and interested in building my career but not having a laptop proved to be a blocker.

Which is why I like the Datacamp platform. Datacamp has an inbuilt IDE where you do not need to download software or tools before you learn. You can learn by using the website on your phone or just the app on your phone. This made me remain consistent with learning.

Thank you so much for sharing that. You are right about Datacamp, it is such an amazing platform. If you were to start your journey again from the start, how would you go about it?

Whewww, I will change a lot of things. My roadmap was kind of backwards. I started with Python to end up learning Excel, ????????. By the time my current job offer came along, I had not learnt Excel. I had just started learning SQL; if I were to start again I think I would change the order in which I learnt the tools. I will probably start by learning Excel, before moving to a database SQL preferably before moving to PowerBi and maybe Python. I’d also work on more projects.

I like that you consistently kept learning even on your job. Now Tina, from your experience so far mentoring, teaching and content creating what do you think are the common mistakes you see beginners make in the field?

A lot of beginners now focus on learning and not working on projects. This is single-handedly the biggest mistake beginners make. When taking a course stop focusing on the practical aspect of it, instead focus on working on projects, focus on finding datasets and work on them. Also, make sure when you share your project, put your best foot forward.

Secondly, beginners tend to wait to apply for roles after they have learnt all the tools. Do not wait to start applying until after you learn all the tools. I have seen beginners apply and get roles by just knowing Excel. Apply for roles once you start consistently working on projects.

Thirdly, beginners tend to not have a “business problem to solve” when they are building dashboards. Beginners need to have objectives, business problems and KPIs very clear when working on dashboards.

Lastly, not having a roadmap for what you want to learn might lead to you being all over the place. I will advise that beginners work on having a roadmap and a structure on what they want to learn a timeline, and projects they want to work on.

I agree with everything you said. On applying for jobs, I always advise everyone to apply once they see that they meet 60% of the job requirements. Meeting 100% means there is no room to improve or grow within the role which can mean that the role is not for you. Thank you once again for highlighting these. This is a controversial question, do you think Maths/ Stats is important for a Data Nerd to know?

Definitely. At least the basic mean, mode and median should be known by every data nerds. Also, basic high school mathematics is great to know for all data analysts.

Thank you so much, Tina. Whewww, you did a great job answering that. I have two last icebreaker questions to ask you to end the session. The first one is “What is your best dish/ food and why?”

My best food is “Yamarita and Egg Sauce”. Haha, the chicken republic has spoiled me with this food. If there is anyone who would love to surprise me with food, “Yamarita and Egg Sauce” does it for me.

The second icebreaker question is “We see you are an avid soccer watcher, what is the best thing about the sport to you?”

If you look at my bio, you will see that I will support every other club but Manchester United is where I draw the line. Chelsea which is my favorite football club rn is currently affecting my mental health so I have decided to stay away from football. I started watching football far back in 2006; I am really in love with the sport and with Chelsea. If I am not working or watching Kdrama you will catch me watching a match or watching highlights on YouTube.

Any last advice?

For beginners who have not started their journey but are hoping to start soon; I will advise you to go on YouTube, do your research, create a roadmap, set timelines, work on projects, join a community, build in public share your journey, network, BE CONSISTENT, and no gree for anyone.

Thank you so much for joining us, Tina. This was an amazing session.

If you’d love to listen to the entire conversation (recording), kindly click on the link below. Share, like, and leave comments if it resonate with you.

Listen to the recording.

Connect with Tina on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

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