“Working with totally new people and seeing how they approach new problems is fascinating.”

Lydia has had a storied career and an incredible variety of experiences that make her a brilliant addition to any volunteer team here at DataKind UK. She’s also taken on some great hobbies in her spare time — ask her about building walls, laser cutting, or anything in between!

How did you get started in data?

I first realised that a career in data might be for me when my first job after university was on the trading floor of an investment bank. I had a maths degree, but I was never very good at statistics!

I soon found that I enjoyed building models much more than tracking stock price moves. I was more interested in the in-depth models of profit and loss we built for some organisations. One of my favourites involved modelling the finances of a care home using the number of beds, revenue per bed, and expected occupancy rate. I gained my first understanding of the range of strategies different businesses have, and how to understand financial reports, which has remained incredibly useful.

At my next job, I started doing web analytics in a data analyst role — we had no tooling so I was taking raw website logs. Then I joined Meta (Facebook at the time) and worked in a team with software engineers, product managers, and designers to improve the onboarding process for Workplace, their business communications tool. That team ran experiments constantly, about 200 per year. I learnt how to run fair and effective experiments to improve our processes.

What is your daily work like and what tools do you use?

Most recently I’ve been at GHGSat, which uses satellites to detect methane emissions from space. My team is building a product for financial investors to make greener investment decisions from directly reported satellite data. We are building a model to understand how much gaps in satellite observations of different facilities matter. This is the first time I’ve built a product directly so I’m learning lots about project management and unit tests. Most of our code is run in Python, although personally, I’m strongest in SQL.

What do you wish you’d known when you started to get into data?

That really understanding why you are doing your work can make your work much more effective. It’s really tempting looking for interesting patterns if you love data, but it takes ages. After two weeks I’d realise that I didn’t know what I was doing, or why.

Now before starting a project I have a standard process I follow. I first make sure I understand what the underlying business question is — sometimes you need to go back to stakeholders to confirm this. Then I plan out what data will answer that question most clearly, or what model is needed to solve the problem. Finally, I plan out the work I’m going to do, and only then start the analysis.

What is a data project that inspires you?

Our World in Data. They were the source of Covid data and have now expanded into a whole range of different data sets. My current favourite is literacy rates per country since 1500. I’m amazed by their skill in standardising data from messy and incomplete datasets and I love how clearly they document the work they have done.

Did you always think you were going to go into data?

At primary school, we had to dress up as what we wanted to be as an adult. I dressed up as a scientist (I still have the photo tucked away somewhere). Even at that age I really loved maths and was helping the year above with their maths problems.

I often consider more pragmatic jobs, because they’re so satisfying — I once did dry stone walling with the National Trust. There are loads of things I think about doing when I retire!

What drew you to volunteer with DataKind UK?

In 2020 I got involved with DataKind. I’d been looking for a way to give back and I wanted to use my skills at the same time. DataKind provided me with an excellent opportunity to do that.

Thus far I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with two DataDive weekends, project managing for the Evidence For Development DataCorps project, and on the other side of the table as one of the charity representatives for the Stemettes, where I’m a director.

What’s surprised you most about your volunteering experience?

I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve learnt. Working with totally new people and seeing how they approach new problems is fascinating. You learn so much about how they think about things, and the tools they use.

Is there a resource you’d recommend to the community?

Glue: talking about roles that make the rest of the team successful, when you want to take those on, and when it’s best not to.
If you are looking for amazing stories read by someone with a beautiful voice I’d recommend LeVar Burton Reads. Not data related at all. I’d recommend starting with Cuisine des Mémoires by N.K. Jemisin.

Tell us something non-data-related about yourself!

I still own a signed copy of a Tomb Raider game from the developers as a thank you for running a fan site.

Community member Lydia Monnington