Her Story
About Rachel
I've been in my field for 4 years now, and my journey has been quite a pivot. I started in corporate America back in 2005, working in the mailroom for Summit Consulting, a workers' comp company under Liberty Mutual. I spent years in healthcare, doing healthcare reimbursement and working as a medical coder for several years in revenue cycle. I always had to deal with data but never had control over how it came to me, how clean it was, or how accurate it was. I knew my pain points from being on the business side, and I always wanted to be in control of cleaning up the data and making a business analyst's life so much easier. So in 2021, I stopped working completely and attended a 6-month boot camp at Rice University for data analytics and visualization. I had 17 years of experience in healthcare and medical claims, and then I actually excelled in IT, which I had never done and didn't go to school for. I self-taught pretty much every concept that I know. Before my current role at SBFE, I was at CDW through their academy program. For 6 months, I learned about the industry as a consultant and got about 10 certifications. After the academy, I became an analyst, then moved to senior data analyst after about 6 months. The track was to take me from analyst to engineer, and I was already on projects as the associate engineer even though my title was still senior analyst. I was laid off from CDW in July, but fortunately, my manager at SBFE, Holly, had found me on LinkedIn and reached out. There were 5 interviews where I met the CEO and several other individuals, and I was onboarded at the end of April, which saved me from unemployment.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Rachel
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
My mentor Mary Vesey at MD Anderson helped me completely change my perspective on workplace challenges. I used to take everything to heart and felt like it was me against everybody else. But she helped me look at obstacles from a different perspective and realize that no one is out to get you. Everybody is just trying to get work done with the least amount of problems. That shift in mindset, understanding that workplace challenges aren't personal attacks, has been fundamental to how I approach my professional life today. I attribute a lot of my personality traits and the way that I look at obstacles within the workforce to what I learned from her.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would just encourage her, being realistic that it is male-dominated and continues to be a hurdle to have your voice stand out. I come from a perspective of understanding imposter syndrome, because I dealt with that really, really heavy at CDW, until I became confident in myself. I realized I was doing things on the side and coming up with exactly what the principal consultant was coming up with. What I find is that the confidence is what most junior professionals lack. It's not the skill set - they can write queries, they know how to write Python, but they haven't found their voice yet. So I encourage them to speak up, let people know that you're engaged, and don't just be a fly on the wall. Even if it's wrong, or they have to tweak it a little bit, at least it shows initiative and shows that you're resourceful.
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