Daniel Bernatowicz

How did you pick your career? Did you know all along?

I think I am still trying to figure that part out! I was never the best student in my classes and often felt lost. I initially thought I wanted to major in Mechanical Engineering, but after 2.5 years I admitted to myself that it was not for me and I ended up majoring in Finance. I ended up accepting a full time role as an FP&A analyst at a retirement solutions company, and quickly realized I was, once again, in the wrong thing for me. I had to really look in the mirror and ask myself what it was that I enjoyed doing, and NOT doing! For me, I had to be building something where I can visually see progress. Additionally, it had to be something that is dynamic, fast, and challenging, otherwise I'll get bored and disengaged. I challenged myself by taking additional online coursework to expand my knowledge base outside of finance and came across a video about data visualization on YouTube. After that, I was hooked! I practiced creating my own dashboards outside of typical use cases and asked my friends and family for their feedback. While practicing my data analysis and visualization skills, I had the opportunity to accept a role at my current company and have been primarily assigned to data analysis and visualization projects. The industry I'm in, the company I'm at and the work I do was never planned. However, if I didn't take that first step to challenge myself to change something, I wouldn't have found the thing I love doing!