On Friday 24 October, we were invited to an IEEE NSW Education Chapter and DataWomen university mixer where we had the privilege to talk to information technology students of all levels about all the different roles they can pursue in the IT field. We paired that with examples of the roles we have here at InterWorks, the different activities we perform in our day to day and how our diverse toolset fits together in the current modern data cloud.

Above: Carol Prins, Dr. Geng Sun, and me as presenters for the mixer.

How We Talked the Talk

We started off by sharing who we are as both DataWomen and InterWorkers. We were able to chat a bit about how InterWorks started, which you can find in this blog post here, and shed a little light on how a group of good friends having fun started what is now a global consultancy that lives by the mantra, “Best People, Best Clients, Best Work.”

Up next came the more technical aspects of the event, where we discussed our modern technologies stack and the InterWorks reference framework, diving into how the different tools line up with each other and within the different areas required for a great data strategy to make the best use of the data.

From there, we took a broader view of the different roles within our consultancy, which tools within each role we generally use and what type of activities we do as part of such roles. We had a goal for them to understand all the different possibilities when looking at starting a professional career in the tech consultancy field.

We started to wrap up by sharing some of our clients’ success stories, and how data have an impact within their day to day and in the long term. We love being able to draw real world parallels to the data they may interact with every day, but not realize it!

In the final leg of our presentation, we shared couple of stories of great, and sometimes unexpected, career transformations we’ve seen at InterWorks. For instance, Beth Kairys went from a psychologist to analytics consultant, and Colleen Chen jumped from lawyer to data scientist. We’ve embedded videos of their stories at the bottom of this post.

Helping Others Walk the Walk

After our presentation, we hung around with the students for some great conversations over pizza and soft drinks. We wanted to chat directly with the students about some options they have when they graduate, which can sometimes be a daunting question for both undergrad and grad students alike. Sharing our experiences and the technical areas we both like the most, as well as why we love all things data, gives them lots of hope for their careers to come.

Above: Part of the in person group for the mixer

All in all, it was a fantastic event. I’m very excited for the what the future holds for all these enthusiastic people! If you’re interested in learning more about DataWomen, check out our informational page here.

Above: Beth Kairys’s presentation

Above: Colleen Chen’s presentation