Meet Emma, Head of Data Science
A little bit about me
I am Emma Duckworth, Head of Data Science at Haleon based in London, UK.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I do not remember Data Science being widely spoken about when I was at university, so my entry to Data Science was a happy accident, through maths. I have always loved maths and studied applied maths for my undergraduate and masters respectively. When I graduated, I knew I wanted to work with numbers, and was looking for a creative and strategic way to do so. Luckily, after a few forays into other industries, I found Data Science. As a graduate I started working as a consultant for IBM, where I learnt how to use predictive analytics to solve business problems and about IBM Watson, one of the most exciting Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovations at the time.
My learning accelerated when I then began working in start-ups, where the pace was fast, and we were focused on creating sustainable products with Data Science. I learnt a lot about building teams and started to get excited by the power of partnership and new technology. In these roles I worked in industries including retail, finance, luxury goods, charity, property and even the pizza business. Every company I worked with showed me a new way that Data Science can deliver value and transform companies.
That lead me to Haleon, where I got the challenge and opportunity to build the Data Science team for the world’s largest Consumer Health company. The team now create Data Science solutions in Marketing, Research & Development (R&D), Supply Chain, and Manufacturing and many other areas of the business, and are based between the UK, US, India, and China, so there is plenty to keep me busy and learning.
What is your data science specialty and how long have you been doing it?
Responsible AI is currently a big focus for me. I am passionate about AI Ethics and in my role, I have been working on what responsible AI means for a Consumer Health company. This means looking at how to embed new ways-of-working so that AI applications at Haleon, both developed by the Data Science team and our partners more broadly, live up to our principles and standards. This area of Data Science is rapidly evolving and it’s critical as a consumer health company that we stay updated.
Why did you get into the healthcare sector?
I’ve always loved the idea of working in consumer health as creating products and systems that improve people’s lives appeals to me. However, I thought that with a maths background it wouldn’t be possible for me to do so meaningfully. When the opportunity came to join Haleon (GSK Consumer Healthcare at the time) I felt very fortunate. We are at an incredible point in history where the combination of health, data and technology are converging, resulting in incredible progress. We are all beneficiaries of this progress, so it’s inspiring to get to partner with my peers and colleagues who are experts on the health and technology side, to innovate new solutions to big problems.
What do you do day to day?
My days are very varied, though typically start with a podcast or two, reading and then things diverge from there. In any given day I will be splitting my time between working with our Data Office leadership team on our strategy, recruitment, development, and Data Science projects. I am generally focused on 2–3 of our strategic programmes such as our Responsible AI programme or flu forecasting. As part of my role, I need to prioritise how Data Science and Machine Learning can best support the company. Our purpose is to deliver better everyday health with humanity, underpinned by trusted science, or “trusted data science”. This involves partnership with stakeholders across the company and external organisations.
What’s your top tip for anyone who wants to enter the field?
Just do it, give it a go! Data Science can seem intimidating from the outside but it’s an industry where we need more people from a range of diverse backgrounds. It is a field that is evolving all the time, so fresh perspectives are highly valued. If you are starting out, you will probably learn something new that someone more established hasn’t had a chance to learn yet, and I love that both junior and senior members complement one another. That is one of the reasons I believe teams are more productive and innovative than individuals. Real life Data Science is quite different to the theory, and often about bouncing ideas off each other, experimentation and making mistakes so expect to get things wrong and for things to break, that’s part of the fun.
What do you like most about working at Haleon?
Haleon is the first “in-house” role I’ve had, and I was worried that it would lack some of the variety that you gain from working in agencies or consultancies. It turns out to be quite the opposite, and in my role now, I get to learn everything from consumer health to real world evidence, to Natural Language Processing (NLP) supporting our consumer relations, to smart manufacturing for toothpaste. What really excites me, is the scale of the impact we make. I, like millions of people around the world, use our products daily so it feels very real when our work is making a positive difference. Covid-19 showed us just how important personal health is and gave a glimmer of how technology can support our development of health products and services. Haleon is committed to improving health inclusivity for millions of people globally and working here has allowed me to work on projects that inspire, such as how to improve the gender healthcare gap. I get to do all of this with an amazing team who put a smile on my face daily.
