“I’ve always liked mathematics, but I also wanted to really do something with it. I was looking at technical mathematics and econometrics and happened to end up on the VU site for Business Mathematics & Information, which is now Business Analytics. The combination of mathematics applied to business problems and computer science seemed great and, after a trial lecture during an open day, I knew what I wanted. VU is a wonderful university with good teachers and facilities. And the city of Amsterdam also helped with the choice, of course.
“I studied abroad twice. First in Sweden and then ‘a bit further away’ in Wuhan in China. Nobody was actually familiar with Wuhan back then. That was really fun and interesting because I didn’t take science courses, but language and culture. I also learned about Chinese culture by being there and learning a lot about the country. Especially in an international context, it is useful to have spent time in other countries. And, not least of all, there’s very good food in China.
“After my studies, I ended up at KLM. It wasn’t an entirely intentional choice, but it worked out perfectly. I first worked there for a number of years in a central consultancy department where our entire team had a background in mathematics and operations research and similar fields. It was a lot of fun solving all kinds of mathematical problems throughout the entire company (KLM and Air France).
“I started doing more and more projects in the area of data usage for the digital marketing department. From there, it was a logical step to become responsible for the usage of data and analytics for digital marketing. It was a totally different world from our ‘mathematics consultancy department’. Another difference was that I became responsible for projects, and also initiated projects where necessary, instead of working on the implementation as a consultant.
“After that, I moved to the digital strategy department, where I worked not only for marketing, but for digital as a whole, on how we use our (client) data to make our offer as relevant as possible. This was with the statement that we never change the price because you search our site multiple times!
“For optimisations, it is necessary to have a system that can make the right predictions or combine the right data, for example. It is just as important to use it in a smart way within the organisation. There are a lot of opportunities for us to make smarter use of all the systems that we already have in place. I think this applies to any large company. Making optimal use of these is quite a challenge, but a very nice one.”
