My name is Beatriz Cercas. I’m a marketing research graduate and I have 10 years of experience working as a market analyst with different FMCG companies.

My marketing degree was preceded by a degree in psychology. By specializing in social psychology, I became familiar with applying psychology to the field of marketing. My keen interest in this subject led me to my second degree, and to focus my career on the marketing research sector.

With this background, I decided to broaden my professional data analysis knowledge and technical skills by enrolling in the IE Data Science Bootcamp.

The fifth week of the Bootcamp is about to start, and I’ve just moved to Madrid. I have so far been taking advantage of the Liquid Learning format—in my case, it was the only way I could attend class during these first weeks. However, it’s important to have in-person contact with professors and classmates, which is why I have decided to change the format. I’m looking forward to finally meeting my classmates in person!

The fourth week of the Bootcamp has been the most intense so far. At the start of the week, we took our first exam for Python coding, and then we had to take the math and stats test, which are the most challenging classes for me.

This week, we have been assigned our Capstone Projects to apply the data science skills we’ve learned to real-life scenarios. I’m excited to work in the QDQ media team over the next two months. We also had our first Client Touchpoint meeting during which Javi, the Marketing Director of QDQ, explained the specific challenge of the company and the data we’ll use to solve it.

In order to develop the project and work as a team we’ve been taking classes on agile methodology and we just have started using Scrum. We have also started Data Lab classes, which have been very useful to clarify the needs of the company by using a Lean Canvas model.

Furthermore, we had our first industry talk with Alberto Tornero Suárez, Partner at PwC and Head of Scale-ups & Open Innovation. Alberto spoke to us about his experience in Data Strategy: Ownership & Exploitation, helping us recognize the challenges when working with personal and non-personal data. I very much welcome the opportunity to hear the view of an experienced professional in the industry.