Badoo's Product Analyst Nominated as Rising Star of the Year at Women in IT Awards

If someone had told Aleksandra Vangelova at the beginning of her career that she would be nominated for a Women in IT Award one day, she might have laughed. After all, it’s not the most predictable outcome for a woman who began her working life in marketing. But then, perhaps the unlikely path she’s taken is exactly what makes Alex such a great candidate.

For those of you who haven’t already heard of it, the Women in IT Awards is the world’s largest event aimed at bringing gender equality to the technology industry. We’re all familiar to some extent with the gender imbalance in the average tech company, but the Women in IT Awards tackle the disparity in a positive way, by championing the sector’s best and brightest women.

Step forward, Aleksandra. 

Alex is from Bulgaria and moved to the UK to complete a degree in Business Management at Anglia Ruskin, before moving on to Kingston for her Master’s in Marketing and Advertising. “I’ve always been good with numbers,” she says, “but I also have this creative side that I’ve never really got to express. So after doing a business degree, I really wanted to do advertising and marketing, to be in a cool agency doing TV ads and stuff like that!”

But, ultimately, it was her aptitude for numbers that won the day. Having started off completing a few different marketing internships to build up some experience, Alex was quickly promoted to Customer Insight Analytics Executive at CharityJob. This was the beginning of her love affair with data.

“It was a big change from what I had studied, very different, and it involved a lot of learning on the spot because it was such a small company. I found it helped a lot to go to meetups and conferences, because no one at work could teach me. So, I constantly looked for people outside my company to learn from.” She studied some statistics as part of her degree, but the reality was proving to be very different. “The statistics I studied is not the kind of thing you can apply to everyday analytics!”

There’s no doubt in Alex’s mind that timing, in her case, was everything. “I think I started right when the field really began to bloom, and I was lucky to be in a place where I was able to explore what it was about.” She remembers: “When I was first looking for a job, there were a lot of well known and old fashioned companies who were looking for someone to come in and help them innovate, to join them and create a team from scratch.”

Times were definitely changing - and not only in favour of analytics. “I can see why it would be difficult for women in this industry sometimes. Especially for someone from my background. I felt it would be hard for me to gain the trust of my male colleagues. I didn’t have much confidence because I’d come from marketing rather than software engineering, so I was cautious about approaching them.

However, I’ve always been surrounded by people who believe in me and what I can do - and not just because of my gender. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever encountered any real discrimination. But I think it would help in future if people had a better understanding of IT, and knew that it’s not just about programming. It’s not a new idea, but I think it’s painfully true that part of the gap between men and women comes from education. At school, IT wasn’t taught in a way that was attractive to the girls, but since I’ve graduated, I’ve had access to lots of conferences and training courses with discounted or free entry for women. It gives us a chance to see what it’s really all about.”

Now working on product analysis, her job, to put it simply, is to make sure that it’s possible to collect data on all the work we do. Her team are the ones who make sure that all new features are tracked correctly and then help to interpret the resulting information - meaning that the rest of the company knows what works, what doesn’t and where to focus its energy next.

Although she does want to expand her understanding of machine learning, Alex has also realised that she has a real aptitude for working with people - which might be part of the reason behind her nomination.

“I actually wanted to nominate someone else,” she says, “and I showed my colleagues the award to push them towards nominating her with me. But, without me knowing about it, they nominated me instead!”

She may have been caught unawares, but her colleagues’ enthusiasm for her makes sense: she’d developed a reputation for bringing innovation to the company, and was known for educating the people around her about how to interpret incoming data and put it to good use. According to them, she “spread the love for data”. Not surprisingly, then, her nomination came under the category of ‘Rising Star of the Year’.

“For me, my biggest challenge was moving fields, from marketing to IT, but for a lot of the other attendees and nominees, the struggle to overcome discrimination was real - especially for the older generations. I was extremely pleased to talk to other people who agreed that it should be about educating people about what IT is, where to find resources and how to get started in the sector.

I heard the stories of two key speakers, Baroness Martha Lane Fox from lastminute.com and Caroline Glackin from AWS, who both talked about how they were discriminated against 10, 20 years ago. I also talked to Gen X women, who stressed the challenge of being a woman, and Gen Y women who never mentioned discrimination. And I talked to men who all knew that there was - and still is - discrimination, and who were keen to make a change.

One man in particular said something simple, yet so smart: if we as a whole want to advocate for more women in tech and IT, we need men to share their knowledge and be part of the change too. We all have to work together.

For me, it’s never been about men or women, but about more or less experienced professionals - it just so happens that the experienced people who took me under their wings were men.”

But does a nominated Rising Star of the Year have any advice for her fellow women in IT?

“The event was eye opening and inspirational. I am lucky not to have experienced discrimination, but I think of inequality as just a knowledge imbalance that can be fixed with some help and determination.

There are a lot of resources out there, especially online, but I’m the kind of person who likes to go out and talk to people, and listen to people talking. There are lots of meetups, and I think it’s amazing how friendly the London community is. They’re all so open about sharing their experiences and advice.

But I think what’s most important is overcoming the fear of not knowing something. Don’t be afraid, and don’t assume anything because people might know less than you think.”

Ultimately, her goal now is to become a consultant, but also a mentor. “I’m definitely planning to stay in the technology industry, and I know that the way I progress in my career could affect a lot of people. I can see that I’m building a very interesting set of experiences by coming from such a different background. I think it could be valuable for me to show other people how I did it, and push them to do the same.”

Aleksandra is a great example of why you shouldn’t let anything keep you from pursuing your passions and letting your career take the path it’s meant to follow - whether or not that path is the one you originally expected it to be. Having grown from an idealistic marketing intern to a competent data analytics professional with a prestigious nomination under her belt, she is absolutely an inspiration to us all - and we can’t wait to see what she does next!