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About
This Month I Learnt (TMIL) is a monthly thematic conversation covering a broad spectrum of topics around projects, careers and developments in design, products, finance and more. This month we talk to Thaddea Chua, a Data Science Consultant at Accenture, working in the health and public sector industries.
Resources, reading materials, and Thaddea’s projects and profile can be found below.
Context
Today, consulting companies work on massive digital infrastructure projects globally, from establishing COVID-response centers, to the development of digital health apps, and creating digital services for citizens. In the digitally enhanced world we live in, what is the role of a consultant in the context of these advanced projects, and what does it mean to build technological infrastructure for businesses and organizations?
Content
In this episode, Thaddea and I discuss about her journey from pursuing bioinformatics in her formative years in undergraduate education, and how those experiences led to the development of important technical skills that were crucial and valuable in the public sector consulting space.
She reflects on the differences in the definition of innovation between academia and consulting, and how innovation does not necessarily mean working at the forefront of technology, but rather, working at the forefront of value creation for the organizations and businesses she interacts with. She elaborates on this through a specific example of equipping law enforcement agencies with effective computer vision technologies, and how it helped the organization enhance public safety.
We also dive into the challenges of developing digital infrastructure for monolithic governmental organizations, and the challenges experienced throughout the design, build and maintenance phases, and how the facilitation of people and stakeholders play a central role in the conversation of technology adoption.
Finally, Thaddea shares 4 tips on getting into the consulting industry, from creating a personal brand, obtaining core technical skills, adopting a problem solving mindset, and the value of networking early.
Thaddea Chua’s Profile
Thaddea is a Data Science Consultant at Accenture. She’s spent her career working in the consulting industry across South East Asia, and more recently in Toronto, Canada.
Her portfolio of work includes building digital infrastructure for various public health and law enforcement agencies to combat financial fraud, enhance border control and engineer better data systems to eliminate operational pain points for monolithic public organizations.
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