Buried in the marks of memories are questions one often wonders – what is it that made me who I am today? The world we live in is an amalgamation of cultures, languages, people, and their experiences. Hispanic Heritage Month is a celebration of this intricate web of relationships – to acknowledge and honour where we come from and how it shapes us.
Meet one such wonderer- Alberto Colin. Hailing from Mexico City, Alberto works as a Forecasting and Capacity Manager at Mercado Libre. Throughout the conversation, Alberto’s insights about life, his childhood, family, and career reflect the impact it has had on his life today.
His process of choosing chemical engineering was based on the responses he got from people around him about the most difficult stream of engineering. He decided to pursue chemical engineering from one of the biggest universities in Mexico because he knew he wanted to learn in a scientific field. More than this, he knew that the complexity of chemical engineering meant a vast array of options for his career. As he talks about his education, Alberto mentions how education is “focused on respect to your parents.” He discusses the impact of family and parents on education as a child.
“In the end, what you studied is not what you’re going to make your life. It’s something that shapes the way you think and how you solve problems.”
Alberto’s resilience through shifting domains and industries in his career is a testimony to this outlook on education. He eventually moved to the domains of analytics and finance. In his first job as a research intern in an oil and gas company, he realized he wanted to choose his own career and make a transition. He pursued higher education in Finance and Marketing, moving to work in a chemical distribution company. As his career progressed, he started working as a Business Intelligence Manager in another company. This was his first tryst with data and analytics. He then learned how to program in SAS and started understanding Data Science at his job with Walmart Bank. Through the years, Alberto worked in various companies with different profiles. Two things remained a constant part of his journey- his perseverance across industries and his love for data.
Alberto’s career witnessed him working in various capacities in financial companies before his move to the pharmaceutical industry. He worked on developing dashboards with his “pretty techy” team as he discovered and worked on Python. Eventually, Alberto found an opportunity to start working with Mercado Libre. He talks about how the pandemic affected the historical data needed to create and implement models- a skill that forms a major part of his job. He talks about the type and amount of data he has worked with across domains, explaining with ease the differences among industries relatively disconnected from one another. His expertise and work ethic, whether it be while choosing chemical engineering because of its complex flexibility or moving between industries, showcase just how much he values the process of learning.
Courage, not naivety across industries
Alberto jokingly doubts whether his transition from industry to industry was a courageous choice or an act of naivety. He’s quick to resolve this as he remarks how difficult it can often be to adapt to the data usage patterns of different industries. What is also revealed to us when he says this is his incredible determination to learn and be the best version of himself.
“The most important thing in these transitions has been the teams…It’s difficult to learn as quickly as you need to because you have to deliver results.”
He goes on to give examples of how different data usage is in the pharmaceutical industry to the finance industry. Crediting his successful learning to the support from his teams, he remarks how a team is only as weak as the weakest member. Building each other up, encouraging everyone to know they all bring something to the table seems to be Alberto’s approach to understanding how helpful a positive environment is for learning.
When asked about his biggest accomplishment, he doesn’t talk about the most cutting-edge or revolutionary work he’s done. Instead, he talks about the first model he ever built, years ago, where he had to learn the process and skill from scratch. His biggest challenge was also the beginning of learning how to program. A single phase of the growth journey being both the most challenging and fulfilling part of his life tells us a lot about how highly he regards his skill. It reflects how impactful the idea of flexibility and learning has been throughout his life.
Alberto’s commitment to growth and fearlessness in the face of change is exactly what Great Learning attempts to empower learners with.
Alberto is an alumnus of the PGP in Data Science and Business Analytics. Find out more about the program here.
