Her Story
About Aspen
Aspen Ambrose is a data analyst in the finance industry with 9 years of experience. She has been with Citizens Bank for nearly 5 years, where her role centers on dashboarding, reporting, and data analytics. A typical day involves meeting with stakeholders to discuss projects, ensuring reporting consistency and accuracy, working with data owners, and delivering professional formats such as dashboards, Excel reports, and PDFs for executive audiences. Prior to her current position, Aspen built a comprehensive reporting system for the audit department at First Citizens Bank, expanding it from a small team with no metrics tracking to a 300-person operation with board-level and CEO presentations. She earned her undergraduate degree from Rutgers and her MBA from Colorado State University in 2020. Her professional credentials include certifications in Tableau and Alteryx as well as Certified Scrum Master status. Aspen attributes her success to her confidence, willingness to ask questions, and the support of excellent managers throughout her career. She advises young women entering the field to speak up and values community involvement and bringing fun to the workplace.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Aspen
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think my confidence. I'm pretty unapologetically myself. I've always asked questions, I've never been afraid to ask questions, I've always challenged commonly held beliefs. I also think I've just had a really great managers, I've been super lucky. I've had great managers, I really haven't had a bad manager.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
My best career advice came when I was early in my career from George, my old manager. He told me to slow down, not go too fast, take your time, not everything needs to be done, but you need to do what you do right.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
It's okay to speak up. I think that a lot of the times, especially in tech, it can be difficult to be a woman in the field. People don't always listen to you or they just don't think that you belong. Not being afraid to speak your mind, because it is culturally just kind of taught that we come second, but I don't think that that's true, and we shouldn't value ourselves that way.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think AI is the answer to both of those. It's going to help in a lot of tasks, but people are overvaluating it right now. It's not going to be the cure-all. It doesn't change the fact that we need to be able to teach and give autonomy to associates that aren't technical. If they don't know any kind of background information on data accuracy, then AI is not all that helpful.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Community involvement is really important to me. I think that people overlook their own local community often. Within work, I think having fun. People don't have enough fun at work. I try to bring the fun. My parents told me growing up that we should try to leave the world a better place when we came into it.
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.