About
I first started using dbt in 2016 or 2017 (I can't remember exactly). Since then, I have moved into data and analytics consulting and have dipped in and out of the dbt Community. Late last year, I started leading dbt Cloud training courses and spending more time in the dbt Slack. In consulting, I get to use a range of stacks. I've used dbt with Redshift, Snowflake, and Databricks in production settings with a range of loaders & reporting tools, and I've been enjoying using DuckDB for some home experimentation. To share some of the experiences, I regularly post to LinkedIn and have recently started Analytics Engineering Today, a twice monthly newsletter about dbt in practice.
When did you join the dbt community and in what way has it impacted your career?
I was fortunate that Jon Bradley at Nearmap had the vision to engage the then Fishtown Analytics team (as the dbt Labs team was formerly called) as consultants and begin using dbt in our stack. I can't thank him enough. It was a turning point for my career, where I could combine my interests and experiences in delivering business value, data, product management, and software engineering practices.
Which dbt community leader do you identify with? How are you looking to grow your leadership in the dbt community?
Being in Australia, I often see replies from Jeremy Yeo to people in the dbt Slack. His clarity of communication is impressive.
For growth, I'm hoping that others can benefit from the wide range of experience I have. My newsletter, Analytics Engineering Today on LinkedIn aims to upskill the dbt Community and shed some light on some useful features that might not be well known.
I'll be at Coalesce and am doing some webinars/events later in the year. Come say hi, I love talking dbt and analytics engineering with people.
What have you learned from community members? What do you hope others can learn from you?
The community members are amazing. It's great to be among a group of people that want to learn and improve. I've learned a lot - both from other members helping with my queries and in reading how other businesses have implemented dbt, including their stories on the organizational & technical issues they face.
I hope I can help instill a sense that simple, clean solutions are possible and preferable. I want to highlight that it is important to focus on what is the actual problem you are trying to solve and the fact that it's worth asking for help when you're starting to get stuck.
I'm keen to help more women get the courage to work & lead in STEM. There has been a lot of progress made over the course of my career which is great to see. Australian/NZ women, please connect with me, happy to chat.