Meet Sibel, Head of Data at Frontify and a global citizen. Sibel lived most of her life outside Turkey, where she has been born and raised. Today she is responsible for all the data analytics tasks at Frontify. She joined a small and young team and built up a team of six today including data analysts and engineers.

Sibel started her career in economics with the goal to be a professor, teacher or researcher in her professional life. Little did she know that an economic crisis gave her the opportunity to switch to tech. She moved to Boston to search for a job when a tech start-up gave her the chance to switch to tech. With her background in statistics from her studies, she was up for the challenge and got the chance to change her career into tech. She learned to program in R on the job and soon the contract became a permanent role.

The startup was acquired by PayPal and she leveraged her knowledge even further to become part of the data world. However, being married to a Swiss citizen, they soon longed to go back to Europe and luckily she landed a new job with eBay in Switzerland.

Sibel believes, the traditional way of getting a job by applying for an open position is going to remain. However, to be successful, this requires a mindset shift on both sides, the hiring company and the candidate. Applying for jobs enabled her to work for Ava Women and now Frontify.

There are many ways into tech, and Sibel’s story is just another inspiring and empowering story for women in tech. Roles can be created nowadays and passion can open doors in unexpected ways. Are you looking to switch from academia to an industry job? Then listen to Sibel and her advice on how to switch careers.

Connect with Sibel on LinkedIn.