How has the MSc Marketing at Vrije Universiteit contributed to your professional growth?
The MSc Marketing program besides all the Marketing knowledge has taught me one of the most valuable and transferable skills that is out there, which is critical thinking. I learned how to think about how one thing relates to another, learn to think in analogies, and how important it is to play the devils advocate. During the program, I quickly found out what I enjoyed the most, which is working together with a group of dedicated people on a common goal, working with data to quantitatively test hypotheses, and to uncover actionable insights. The two group projects I had to work on in January with my friends for a full month were an absolute blast. And while I heard how many people dreaded their thesis, for me it was actually amazing to work on your own project for a couple of months. This is the moment where you can combine creativity with literature and actually test whether you’re on to something.
Can you share any specific skills or knowledge acquired during the program that have proven beneficial in your career?
Next to critical thinking, I also learned to think from consumer lens, which helped me tremendously in my analytics journey vs. my peers who have a data science or econometrics background. Data is just data until you turn it into insights. I truly believe that my Marketing background helps me with this conversion.
What kind of work do you do now? Can you explain what your current position entails?
I’m currently a Sr. Data Analyst at Nike where I analyze the behavior of Nike’s members (i.e. people who sign up on Nike App, Nike.com, Stores, and other channels). In this role I aim to analyze how we can acquire, retain, or develop our members by analyzing their historical behavior and purchases. I also analyze the effectiveness of our business decisions and the incremental impact of member specific features. In my role, I also attempt to help our analytics function grow by focusing on specific topics such as causal inference.
When did you know you wanted to pursue this career?
After my Masters I first started at a Media Agency to learn more about online marketing, after that I did an online marketing traineeship at De Volksbank for two years and that’s where I transitioned from online marketing into web analytics and conversion rate optimization. I enjoyed working with consumer data so much that I wanted to learn more about data analysis and data science. That’s why I used my spare time to learn how to program in Python and some machine learning/data science basics. What better way to use consumer data then at Albert Heijn where there are millions and millions of data points from consumers coming in every week. This is where I think I learned the most about analytics, being results oriented, and trying to think about what your aim is of doing a particular analysis. After two and a half years at Albert Heijn, I was asked to join Nike. Because Nike is one of the most well known brands in the world and I studied marketing after all, I saw this as a major opportunity!
