International Women’s Day: Celebrating Women in Technology.
As we approach International Women’s Day (IWD) 2022, which in case you didn’t know is on March 8th this year, we want to highlight several of our amazing colleagues who make us a stronger and more innovative company.
As a tech company on a mission to transform an industry, we stand behind the IWD’s mission to “celebrate digital advancement and champion the women forging innovation through technology”. As such, we thought it would be fun to share a collection of stories that highlight the varied pathways that have ultimately led to a career in technology. We hope that these stories can and will inspire other women to follow suit.
We consider ourselves fortunate to work in a diverse and distributed company with colleagues in every corner of the globe.
We start our series by introducing Jolandi, who works in our Data Science team (and a big thank you for being a part of the IntelliSense.io team Jolandi!).
Can you tell us a little bit about your educational background?
At school one of my favourite subjects was mathematics. I knew I’d be happy if I can work with numbers every day. I wanted to use these skills to solve practical problems and this dream led me to the field of engineering. I completed my undergrad in chemical engineering and fell in love with working with processes and seeing how they can be optimised.
Who helped you on your journey?
I was very fortunate to receive funding opportunities for both my Undergraduate and Master’s degree and will always be grateful to the Sasol Inzalo Foundation and the University of Pretoria for enabling me to pursue my studies.
What has your career pathway looked like?
Before joining IntelliSense.io, I was working as a process engineer in the mineral processing industry. It was during this time that I became increasingly aware of the way in which digitisation is transforming the industry. I knew that this could have a big impact on the efficiency of mining operations and that was something that I wanted to be a part of.
Why did you choose IntelliSense.io?
I watched the Inspirations 2020 event that was presented by IntelliSense.io. As a process engineer, I could see how useful their solutions would have been for many of the problems that I have been faced with during my career. After this, I knew that this was the company that I wanted to work for.
What do you do at IntelliSense.io?
I joined IntelliSense.io as an Applied Data Scientist in May 2021. Since joining Intellisense.io, I have been challenged every day to learn new things and come up with innovative solutions to customers’ challenges. The best of all is that I can see the difference that our products make in the industry.
What are your future plans?
My focus, for now, is to continue developing my skills as a Data Scientist, while learning from the amazing group of people that I get to work with every day. IntelliSense.io has a number of interesting developments in the pipeline and I can’t wait to see what we will achieve in the coming years!
What advice would you give others thinking of following a path in technology?
I wanted to share some useful advice that someone reminded me of recently. Your outcome in life is determined by what you believe you can achieve. If you back yourself and are willing to put in the effort, then you can and will achieve it.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jolandi-labuschagne/
#BreakTheBias #IWD2022
