SINGAPORE - While most of her peers had settled comfortably into their careers, Ms Jessica Tan Siao Wei, a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) physician, decided to switch jobs and go into the data science field.
She was 43 at the time.
A year later, Ms Tan is now a project manager at the Government Technology Agency (GovTech). She works closely with other public agencies on data science projects to improve their policymaking and service delivery.
Once used to analysing patients' records to diagnose illnesses and prescribe TCM treatments, she now helps data scientists from agencies identify issues and forecast what might happen, she said. Before landing this job, she took over a dozen courses in data analytics.
Ms Tan joined GovTech in September last year and works at its data science and artificial intelligence division.
She is currently pursuing a part-time master of technology degree in enterprise business analytics at the Institute of Systems Science, NUS (NUS-ISS).
A firm believer in lifelong learning, she already has a master's degree in education from Melbourne's Monash University and a bachelor's degree in Chinese medicine from the Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine.
Currently in the second year of her master's programme, she has learnt to analyse data sets, pinpoint meaningful relationships between them, and offer useful insights to improve situations, she said. Her lecturers often share their experiences in class.
Making use of what she has learnt in class, she is building a platform that allows various agencies to exploit data securely using a range of analytics tools.
"When working on my current project to build the platform for data analysts and scientists, I am able to put myself in their shoes and develop something functional and user-friendly," she said.
It is a drastic career switch for Ms Tan, who started working as a full-time TCM practitioner at the Singapore Thong Chai Medical Institution in 2018.
At that time, she had already been exposed to data analytics and was impressed by how it can offer useful insights in many fields, including in TCM. To pursue that interest, she decided to work on a part-time basis and attend data analytics courses.
In 2019, she enrolled in a five-day statistics boot camp with the Institute of Systems Science, where she learnt how to use the R programming language for quick visual analytics, having heard about the popular course a few years earlier.
She then went on to take more than a dozen short courses - lasting from one to five days - covering areas such as data storytelling, text analytics, pattern recognition and machine learning systems.
Ms Tan said that the skills she obtained - including programming language and project management competencies - helped her breeze through her interviews at GovTech.
She added that she was able to use what she learnt "to provide detailed and realistic responses confidently".
But juggling work and studies has not been easy, she admitted. "It can be quite intensive at different times."
However, she said that the pursuit of knowledge emboldens people to seize new opportunities, as well as helps them stay relevant and gain up-to-date skills.
"In my case, it gave me the opportunity to work in a data science field that I was not previously trained in," she added.
Ms Tan is looking to take up more courses in the future.
"During uncertain times like these, I believe that upgrading can help sharpen one's skills and give greater confidence to move ahead," she said.
Her current bosses and colleagues have been supportive throughout her career switch, added Ms Tan.
However, some people outside of work - who do not believe in taking the time and money to upgrade in the middle of their careers - had discouraged her from pursuing her aspirations.
"It wasn't an easy path taking courses and moving between different careers," she noted.
"I hope that I can inspire people to not be afraid of learning and to continue to upgrade their skills to realise their dreams."
For more information on NUS-ISS' Master of Technology in Enterprise Business Analytics, visit here.
Article was written by Calvin Yang and first appeared in the The Straits Times here.