LinkedIn: Philippa Knipe

Expertise: Business insight and data analytics

Education: MA Politics & Economics, BA History

As my education would suggest, I didn’t set out to get into data and analytics. After studying humanities as an undergraduate and post-graduate in Newcastle and London, I started my journey as a management graduate with M&S. This led me to many different locations within the store estate and gave me a wealth of experience in project management, relationship management and, of course, retail management.

It wasn’t until I took up a planning role in our Support Office that I became interested in what I could bring to data & analytics, and what data & analytics could bring to me. I trained in my own time and through the company’s apprenticeship scheme, and became passionate about turning information on our stores into insight to drive decision making. Soon after this, I was seconded to a newly-formed ‘Productivity’ function before taking up an Insight Analyst post with Central Store Operations.

Being a retail analyst is a unique challenge due to the breadth of store-based measures available, and the amount of confounding variables that are present when analysing. But the enjoyment I get from my current role lies in it’s variability- I can be bringing a new metric to our retail customers one day, building a machine learning model the next, or discussing reporting strategy with stakeholders after that!

LinkedIn: Martyna Jones

Expertise: Retail, Supply Chain and Logistics, Business Transformation

Education: PhD Physics, MSc Mathematics and Physics

Coming from a numerical and academic background, I was really keen to start my career by getting a good grounding in business and transformation. My first role was working for a management consultancy and as a part of that (by accident rather than design!), I was required to pick up fundamentals of data reporting and visualisation. Little did I know that this was going to be a start of a real passion of mine and a hugely rewarding career journey.

In 2019 I joined M&S, initially in an analytics role, combining data visualisation, drawing insight from data and advising business stakeholders on decisions or direction of strategic projects. While at M&S, I was extremely fortunate to participate in two Data apprentice schemes, L4 Data Analyst and L7 Data Science, which have allowed me to really focus on my technical skills and progress my career. As a result, I have spent some time working as a Data Scientist focusing on pricing optimisation and over the past year have been leading an analytics team delivering transformation projects aimed at modernising our supply chain.

I am hugely passionate about underpinning all business decisions, processes and transformation with data, enjoy working with stakeholders on embedding the change and seeing the results come through to the business bottom line. As a naturally curious person, I really believe a career in data has so much variety and opportunity to offer and I’d encourage anyone to take that first step – you never know where it may take you!

LinkedIn: Nicole Brown

Education: BS, Statistics

Expertise: Data Science & Analytics

In my role as an Enterprise Data Analyst at Marks & Spencer, I focus on the intersection of data science and business problem-solving. I fully embrace the analytical lifecycle, from conceiving requirements to implementing solutions that guide well-informed decisions. In collaboration with cross-functional squads – including Data Scientists, Engineers, ML Ops, and Product Managers – I drive initiatives to assess product value and elevate performance.

My academic foundation, rooted in a statistics degree, laid the groundwork for my data-driven journey. A standout moment was my final-year project, delving into climate change debates through the lens of Statistics. This effort earned me the award of Distinguished Performance in my Final Year Assessment.

My career began at Marks & Spencer, where I joined as a Digital Graduate focusing on optimising data. This role spanned diverse projects, from daily reporting to error tracking and insightful KPI dashboards. Harnessing my university-acquired SQL and R skills, I was driven to refine my coding capabilities. This propelled me into a self-taught exploration of Python and Databricks, expanding my horizons in data manipulation and analysis.

An opportunity arose to join the Data Enterprise team, offering a platform to further learn via courses provided by Cambridge Spark in AI and Data Science.

My journey has been profoundly shaped by role models and mentors in Data. Their guidance fuels my aspiration to spark positive transformations within the data landscape, fostering learning, and empowering women in data.

LinkedIn: Louise Baird

Expertise: Retail, HR, People Analytics, Machine Learning, Data Science

Education: L7 Data Science & AI, L4 Data Analytic Concepts & Tools, BA English Literature with Film Studies

I’ve worked my whole career in Retail, in customer facing store roles for different high street retailers across all levels, from customer assistant up to Regional field roles.

I decided to diversify my career and move into the world of data after successfully securing a place on a Level 4 Data Analyst apprenticeship, provided by M&S. This programme allowed me to build my knowledge of data science from non-existent, to a level that enabled me to obtain a role in the People Analytics team in October 2020.

In the three years since then I’ve helped to drive further adoption of data, analytics, and insight across the People function. I’ve also stepped up to lead the team, consisting of insight partners and analysts, who contribute towards enabling our business to make more data-led decisions in relation to our colleagues.

Recently I’ve completed another apprenticeship through the business, a Level 7 in Data Science & AI, which will help me to further drive the use and adoption of advanced data science techniques in People Analytics at M&S, providing the business with targeted insights to enable strategic decision making.

LinkedIn: Madeleine Lockwood

Expertise: Conducting data analysis, creating dashboards, data modelling, forecasting whilst working with different software such as Azure SQL, Jupyter Notebook Python, Power BI and Adobe Analytics.

Education: Mathematics and Sports Science as a joint honours degree, majoring in Mathematics

My interest in data analytics started during my time at university studying Mathematics and Sports Science as a joint honours degree, majoring in Mathematics. My career journey began at Berenberg, an investment bank, where I worked Client Relations as a data associate. I then moved to Intertek as a Financial and Planning Data Analyst, gaining insights from data to drive financial business decisions whilst studying for CIMA exams.

Since January 2022, I’ve been a Digital Analyst in the International Analytics team at Marks and Spencer. Here, I apply my analytical skills to optimise International operations through data-driven insights. I am currently enrolled in the Level 4 Data Analyst Apprenticeship program. This opportunity is allowing me to expand my skill set by learning about various areas such as data modelling, machine learning, analytics tools and statistical testing.

LinkedIn: Imogen Reid

Expertise: Data analytics, customer insight

Education: BSC in Mathematics with Finance – University of Exeter, Level 4 Data Analyst Certified – Decoded Academy Apprenticeship

I have worked at M&S for the past five years, starting my career in marketing as an assistant campaign manager in the CRM team. With a degree studying mathematics and statistics I have always been interested in data and how it can be used to drive decision making and growth in a business. Luckily for me, M&S provides the opportunity to develop skills in data analytics and data science through apprenticeship programs, in 2021 I graduated from the Level 4 Data Analyst apprenticeship, with newly acquired skills in Python, SQL, data visualisation and stakeholder management and a foundation in machine learning. The course unlocked both a love of data and a path to career progression at M&S, I have since worked in online analytics teams across M&S.com in Commercial Strategy and Trading & Growth, using my new skills to uncover opportunities, understand trends in the retail market and analyse online customer behaviour. In November 2022 I decided to enrol in the next step of my learning journey, starting the Level 7 Data Science & AI apprenticeship, by the end of which I will be able to identify areas where AI solutions can create opportunities and efficiencies at M&S.

LinkedIn: Suze Howse

Expertise: Retail, Data Strategy, Data Science, Data Education and Literacy, Data Analytics, Product Leadership, Data Governance and Quality

Education: BA Creative Writing and Film Studies

I am Head of Enterprise Data at M&S at M&S, starting my career in stores as a customer assistant 20 years ago. I lead on all things data and data strategy at M&S. This includes modernising our data technology, working with colleagues to drive better and faster decision-making with data, and developing business-wide data education programmes via our BEAM Academy to empower more colleagues through data. I was honoured to be  recognised as one of the Data IQ 100 in 2022, shortlisted for Data Leader of the year and one of the 20 Women in data and tech 2023.

LinkedIn: Eleanor Casey

Expertise: Machine Learning, Data Science, Anomaly Detection, Retail, Finance, Fin-tech

Education: Natural Sciences Degree majoring in mathematics at Durham University

Having always enjoyed maths at school, I then decided to focus my attention on Maths and its applications at university. After this, fortunately, I came across a ten-week Data Analytics course in London and I realised this was the right area for me. The problem-solving nature of the course, coding and the attention to detail all suited my skill set, so I then took my first job as a data Analyst at Model Citizens. It was at Model Citizens that I heard more about Data Science, and this really appealed to me, so I started studying some Coursera courses in my own time to help me transition into this area. The idea of using Data Science to solve very tricky problems really caught my attention.

After taking Data Science roles at MoneySuperMarket and Xelix, working on a broad range of problems (from pricing to fraud detection), I then started at M&S in January 2023 as a senior Data Scientist. My principal focus here is retail Data Science, which I particularly enjoy because it is often outside of the ‘standard’ Data Science problems and the areas you optimise are very tangible. We also get to work with many different stakeholders across the business learning a lot about the retail area.