Helen Louwrens
Director of Intelligence - Care Quality Commission

- How did you get into data and technology, and why?
I’ve always loved maths and numbers – I’m quite a logical person so I excelled at the more analytic subjects at school. I pursued this at university and studied Economics and Statistics. I had an interview at a supermarket for an analyst job in their insight unit. I got really excited by the questions they asked me. ‘How would you write an equation for the amount of time someone’s shopping basket takes to go through the till?’ For me, that was a really interesting applied maths problem and I wanted to find out more.
- What motivates you on a daily basis – what gets you up in the morning?
Being able to do different things in different types of roles and not necessarily be restricted by a certain path.
- How has a setback or obstacle shaped you?
Early on in my career as an analyst I was offered a promotion that I crazily turned down because I didn’t feel that I was good enough. I was working with some really inspirational people though that made me realise the only thing holding me back was my own self-belief, so I powered forward and actually got promoted very quickly – two or three times in the space of two years. The learning is that your own self-belief is the only limitation on what you can achieve.
- What advice would you give your teenage self?
I’d tell my teenage self that it’s ok to be a bit different – that it’s ok to follow your own path and not to just do what’s expected of you.