On Thursday, June 29, data scientist Naomi Smulders won the ‘Data Professional of the Year’ award at Data Insights Network's awards ceremony. Now you may have the interview with Naomi already read. Or maybe you've seen her speak at the Marketing Insights Event or Measure Summit or heard her on the podcast of Women in Analytics. She also published articles over the past year on power calculations and the value of data. In addition to her work, she is very busy gathering and sharing new knowledge and insights. During her studies, she founded several boards and groups where like-minded people from all over the world share knowledge and exchange experiences. At Online Dialogue, she can express her passion for human behavior, data analysis and storytelling. And that also struck the jury of the Data Insights Network. 

The judges' verdict was as follows:

“The jury came to the unanimous verdict that Naomi Smulders is the Data Professional of the Year 2023. With her persuasiveness, passion and innovative approach, Naomi shows that her approach and way of working is an example of how the field of data science and everything around it can be made more enjoyable. The jury hopes that this approach can convince other data scientists and their managers to look beyond data and software alone and that they also get an eye for the human aspect. Moreover, through her perseverance and creative approach, Naomi has shown that a one-woman team is capable of punching way above its weight. The judges would not be surprised if we see and hear much more from Naomi in the future!”

Winners (not in order): Unravel, Centraal Beheer, Daniella Roymans, Roelof Smallenburg, Cathelijn te Koppele, Naomi Smulders and Jenny van Doorn. Maarssen June 29, 2023, DATA INSIGHTS AWARDS 2023, Photo: Bart van der Putten

Data professional of the year 2023

Naomi has worked as a data scientist since 2017 and joined Online Dialogue in 2020. Due to her work on process mining she has been nominated for the Data Professional of the Year Award. Her innovative process mining method looks at the complete customer journey of all website visitors and explores common customer journeys within it. This makes it possible to map the exploratory search behavior of users on the website. In addition, Naomi has developed tools to present these insights in an understandable and usable way to different stakeholders. Thanks to her Python scripts, marketers without programming knowledge can still easily estimate the impact of multiple experiments on the same page. Some of these tools can be accessed for free via the Online Dialogue Conversion Optimization toolkit. By making them available free of charge, it makes a tangible contribution to the field.

Naomi loves dates. A bit like a soccer fan talks about his favorite club or a music fan talks about her band. If you talk to Naomi, you immediately know what I mean. With her infectious enthusiasm for her “data adventure,” she immediately convinced the judges. She has the ability to get everyone interested in the field. The jury was impressed by the impact Naomi makes with her work, both inside and outside the organization. Because Naomi is able to give a human perspective to data, the impact of her work as the only data scientist within her company is greater than one would suspect at first glance. The jury also noticed Naomi's ability to put herself in the shoes of her stakeholders and, where necessary, adapt her communication style to convince them of the importance of her work. The jury also pays tribute to the creative way Naomi has built up her own network of data science colleagues.

Maarssen June 29, 2023, DATA & INSIGHTS AWARDS 2023, Photo: Bart van der Putten

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Multi-award winning agency

The trophy cabinet is steadily growing at Online Dialogue. In addition to this fantastic award, our colleagues also won three awards at Experimentation Elite. One is the Team Agency of the Year Award, which Naomi and her colleagues won along with the team at DPG Media. Also working with Naomi? Then get in touch.