My strive for equality started from an early age, due to the societal circumstances. Lucky to had been raised in an aware and supportive family, I learned to imagine and see myself where the norms said “exclusively reserved”.

Throughout my (ongoing) journey, I came to realize how vital the following are to achieve my goals; continuous self-education, keeping ‘inclusion and diversity’ at the heart of any effort, and not least of all, support!

Being passionate about environmental sustainability, I pursued my education in an STEM field where women were unrepresented, and the lack of role models was an impediment. Nevertheless, during university years I played an active role in various committees and mentorship programs to raise awareness, and to define an action plan for systematic changes.

I joined The LEGO Group in February 2022, an inclusive company where I found the shared vision and values. Currently, I am part of the Demand Forecasting team, where we utilize state-of-the-art modelling approaches and data analysis techniques to deliver high quality predictions. Collaboration and engagement with a diverse group of stakeholders only adds to the joy of my daily job.

In my early career I often jumped into the rescue boat to head out and help users, and I acted as a lifeline they could always call with any data related challenges.
I got involved in tracing errors and teaching colleagues about data. I was learning by doing. Unlike others, I enjoyed doing reconciliations and identifying things that did not match – and explaining to others what the root causes were. Doing this gave me a deep understanding of the importance of having processes, master data and source systems looked after and in good shape. These are extremely important when working with data, however, often being ignored, or underestimated.

As part of our Data Office, I am now on a mission to help foster stronger data capabilities to help colleagues unlock the value of data. I am part of showcasing and role modeling what a data driven mindset is and facilitate a data fluent culture where focus is not only on tools and technology. Equally important are the ability to understand the business domain you are working in combined with a user centric focus and storytelling skills.

Joined the LEGO Group in 1995 as Consumer Sales Analyst. Have worked with data ever since in different roles – spanning both the business side in supporting and analyzing roles (e.g., as analyst and financial controller) and the IT side in enabling roles (e.g., as business process consultant and data manager)

As an introvert and Highly Sensitive Person I often sense things before others notice something is wrong. It also means that I am sometimes a bit ahead of what other people and the organization is ready for.

I am the proud owner of 2 electric cars, I relax when knitting and I am fascinated by the slow living thoughts and idea of retiring early.

As a person Ellis is driven by her passion to promote a learning and development culture across data related fields, both on organisational as well as individual level. This is reflected in her engagement of leading and developing a company wide data fluency initiative with the goal of empowering all colleagues to make more sense out of data.

To start up this Data Fluency initiative has required an experimental and agile approach with focus on testing, learning and adapting. Also, Ellis has engaged colleagues around her to contribute to the data literacy content on an internally developed platform. Promoting internal development of learning content in various shapes and forms, is in line with her strong belief in the great potential of surfacing tacit knowledge from all her talented colleagues across the organisation. This could span from insight on business domain data and processes, to hands on experience with analytic tools and techniques for data modeling and storytelling; all with the overall purpose of inspiring colleagues to continue their data learning journey.

She is also on a learning journey herself, as she is engaging in an initiative to make the company’s high-level Data Ethics principles more operational and useful to data and analytics projects. She is new to Data Ethics, however, very keen on acquiring the needed knowledge and practice to be able to help her colleagues become aware of Data Ethics and how to apply data ethical thinking in the development of new digital solutions.

It is important to Ellis to bring her best self to work and to engage in and spend her time on initiatives she sees value within. She believes that passion, curiosity and a bit of bravery now and then are important elements to bring people forward. So, in early 2021 it was natural for her to connect with and on-board the newly hired Chief Data Officer (CDO) to the Data Fluency initiative. As the CDO also regards Data Fluency as an important capability in current and future teams to be successful, he has rewarded the initiative by elevating and creating a team focusing on Data Literacy, Data Strategy and Data Ethics within the Data Office department.

Ellis sees this both as a recognition and a motivating factor to continue the data literacy journey with her colleagues, and it confirms her view on following what you believe in and dare to speak up about ideas and dreams you may have for your professional career.

Besides being an a Senior Data Specialist at the LEGO Group she is living a family life, married and a mother of two daughters. She strives to be a role-model and to convince her daughters that they can grow up and aspire to careers and life paths as they find interesting. She hopes that they will see a world of opportunities regardless of gender and other potential biases in society. If she as a mother with an engineering degree and a current job in a data organisation can inspire them and other females to follow their interests and dreams, she would be very happy.