Building a Unicorn Data Team with Veronika Durgin of Saks

In this episode, I’m joined by Veronika Durgin, VP of Data at Saks, to learn more about her leadership journey in the data industry. Veronika shares more about her career journey: how she got into data from a background in biology, spent several years working in DBA roles at well-known companies like Monster, Vistaprint, and HubSpot, and then moved into broader leadership roles in data. We talked a bit about her experience starting a family while managing full-time work and completing a master's degree. Veronika also shares some great insights about how to think about engineering excellence as data teams, what differentiates a good engineer from a great engineer, and how to build a unicorn data team. We also talk about how to continue showing up in difficult work environments–and why it’s so important to do this! So, if you’re a data professional looking to hone your engineering skills and craft, or a data leader working on building an exceptional team–this episode is absolutely for you.