Feb Student Highlight of the Month: Latika Kakwani
LinkedIn: https://es.linkedin.com/in/latika-kakwani
Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, what languages do you speak, and what did you previously study?
Hola & Namaste everyone! I come from a culturally rich and vibrant country, India. I was born and raised in a small town called Ajmer, but I have been living and working in Gurgaon for the last seven years. Ajmer is called the holy city of India as it is home to the only temple of Lord Brahma in the world. The tomb of the Islamic Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti is also here. On the other hand, Gurgaon also called the “millennium city” is highly urban where the local offices of more than 250 Fortune 500 companies are located. These two cities are disparate yet amazing. A little more about me, I speak Sindhi with my family, Hindi with my friends in India and English at my workplace and with friends in Spain. I finished my Bachelor's in Computer Science Engineering from University of Rajasthan. I love dancing, especially Indian folk and Bollywood, and I can’t stop myself whenever I hear a foot tapping number ☺
Do you have any work experience? If yes, do tell us about it.
I have more than seven years of diverse professional experience in Finance, Telecom and Networking domains. I started my career as a Software Test Engineer with a wireless networking service provider company, Aricent Technologies. I was working on a very big project for Nokia Siemens Network to implement 3G/4G network in Europe, the fruits of which are being enjoyed by everyone around the world today. Short after, I moved to Amdocs, a software solutions provider to telecom companies like Vodafone. I learned a lot about how telecom companies operate, how they manage the prepaid/postpaid subscriptions, customer queries, billing and fraud management. Later, I joined Royal Bank of Scotland as a Quality Analyst where I independently handled Quality Assurance of two critical Risk Management softwares used by FX derivative traders’ in London, Singapore and New York. I also have a little experience as a teacher in an engineering college, where I taught web-programming in HTML, JSP, Javascript and PHP. During all these years, I have worked around various constraints posed by legacy systems and helped stakeholders to improve their processes. My roles have helped me learn a lot about different people, different cultures and make great friends along the way.
What drew you to Big Data?
I developed a penchant to work with databases when I was in undergrad. I also participated in a contest held by IBM, to create a social networking website for an organization. Since then I have always loved to play with databases. But it was in Amdocs when, for the first time in my life, I was intrigued by the need for big data analytics and its applications at various levels in the organization. I was working on a telecom product for our client, Vodafone Germany, where I came across huge datasets of millions of subscribers. I saw how billing is done and how much efficiency and analytics is needed in Fraud Management and customer churn. Later, in my last company Royal Bank of Scotland, I worked on projects like Risk Analytics and reporting. These were the most important software/tools for investment banking for traders to manage risk and hedge their portfolios. I also got a chance to work on MongoDB. I was really impressed how the analytics projects worked and was fascinated by the vast amount of opportunities generated by NoSQL databases like MongoDB. But I was not adept in these technologies and I felt the need to learn more about big data, analytics and its application in numerous industries. Hence, I decided to pursue this Masters.
Are you pursuing any extra-curricular activity/activities? If yes, how does it help you as a Big Data student?
There are thousands of things to do in the heart of Spain, Madrid. Explore the history, enjoy the nightlife, learn a new language and what not. But besides all of these, I am really enjoying being a coordinator of the IE Big Data and Innovation Club. There was a tough competition to be a coordinator of this club and out of so many students I feel lucky and privileged to be chosen as a coordinator of the Club. At IE Big Data and Innovation Club we are responsible of complementing fellow IE students’ learning experiences, exploring potential areas where big data is applied, helping them reach industry experts, facilitating networking sessions and hosting hackathons where they can actually apply what they learned about big data inside the classroom. At the Club, I am responsible for creating events posters, handling part of the social media promotions, documenting events through photos, purchasing gifts for our resource speakers, booking venues, networking sessions with speakers, etc. But members are free to take part in other Club duties. I love our team and we all work in synergies and share the work and responsibilities to make all the events successful. I am looking forward to the Club’s upcoming events, these events are going to be super exciting and I am sure enriching for all Club members and participants. These events aim to demonstrate how big data is disrupting numerous industries.
What are your short and long-term professional goals after the Masters?
Short-term I would like to start as a Data or Business Intelligence Analyst and work in a data-driven company. I would like to work on the Business Information Systems of technology companies like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, etc. I want to develop my skills and truly understand the key drivers behind a successful data strategy and efficient data governance. In longer term, I would like to build on my acquired skills to lead an analytics team and work as a project manager.
How would you define IE Master’s experience and what do you value most?
Amazing!!! It’s just been four months and I am already starting to feel nostalgic about this city (if I leave), the school, professors and most importantly the friends I have made here. I am going to miss all the parties, late night fun, group work, fun gossips about fellow students ;), being barely awake for my early morning classes but still managing to raise hands for some participation points. These and endless things. I feel so honored to be part of such a prestigious school, being trained by professors who are not just PhD experts but leaders in the companies they own and/or work for. They bring with them real world experiences and teach us in the most practical way. We have students from all continents of the world, having different domain experiences, classmates ranging from 21 to 41 years old. I am so amazed by the bunch of intelligent young students in our class. Sometimes, they challenge the experienced classmates and the professors themselves. I sometimes feel intimidated by the nerds in our class. They have an awesome solution to the most difficult machine learning and R problems. There is so much to learn from all of them. Going back to studies after almost eight years have been challenging initially. But the energy of the class motivates me a lot to achieve and strive more out of my comfort zone!
What would be your advice for future students?
I have two pieces of advice. One, before coming here, I would suggest future students to take up some courses in R, Python and Machine Learning and practice a bit. This would really develop a foundation for the program. The program is just ten months and it will pass with a blink of an eye, so a hands-on foundation will really be helpful. Also, learn some Spanish before coming to Madrid as it will really help interacting with local people as well during networking events. Second advice after coming to Madrid, apart from the usual assignments, take part in various competitions like kaggle, hackathons, summits, etc. This will enrich your learnings and help you think more like a data analyst/scientist. And of course, party hard and travel in and out of Madrid. You will create lifetime memories here. Good luck!!!