Women of the Future scholar Tanya finds her rare data analytic skills in high demand

Successful Woman of the Future scholar Tanya Ramirez is now working for American management consulting firm McKinsey and Co.

Tanya, from Mexico, was one of 30 women on the University of Essex scholarship scheme, created to support intelligent and inspiring women from around the world and equip them with the skills and knowledge needed to empower them to become leaders and drivers of change.

Her role as a data scientist at McKinsey and Co involves advancing analytics solutions where the goal is to implement or develop, alongside the client, state-of-the-art solutions using complex datasets and advanced modelling techniques.

As Tanya’s set of skills are quite rare, in the 18 months she has been with the company she has travelled around the world to work on many different projects in the United States, Canada, Chile, and Colombia.

She studied for a Masters in Data Science at Essex, and her day-to-day role now is to build predictive models and perform exploratory analyses.

“Most of the techniques I use, I learned in the modules which were part of my course at Essex. Even at the beginning, I was reusing code from my studies in my work,” she explained.

There were several reasons why Tanya wanted to study at Essex. “One of my most beloved teachers at my university gained her PhD at Essex. In my field of data science and mathematics, Essex is one of the most highly-recognised universities in the UK and it is one of the most international universities in the world resulting in a friendly and diverse community.”

Tanya found Essex exceeded her expectations. “The international environment of the University made you really feel at home even when you are thousands of kilometres away from your country. At Essex you can meet and build relationships with people from all over the world and the memories I’ve created here will last a lifetime.”