Ana María Guerrero is now a Senior Data Analyst at IKEA in Madrid, working on data analysis for digital products designed to improve the in-store experience for customers and coworkers. Originally from Colombia, she completed both her bachelor’s degree and her first master’s in her home country before making the move to Spain to deepen her skills in analytics and broaden her career options internationally.
Ana began her academic path in industrial engineering and developed an early interest in data once she started working. For her, working with data felt like solving puzzles, which pushed her toward more specialization. She completed a master’s in industrial engineering focused on optimization, data, and statistics, building a strong technical foundation that later shaped her work in applied analytics roles.
After graduating, Ana joined the banking sector and spent three years working across two different banks, including one of the largest private-sector banks in Ecuador. Even with solid early career progress, she reached a turning point. “I turned 25 and realized I did everything I was supposed to do… So, now what?” At the same time, data was rapidly growing as a career field, with more opportunities opening across industries and functions.
Why Ana chose the Master in Business Analytics & Data Science
Ana wanted a program that combined technical depth with business relevance. She said she already had technical skills, but wanted to update them and work with new tools and ways of approaching data. “I had the technical skills, but I needed an update… I wanted to learn how to apply that to business,” she explained. In her previous roles, she had noticed that many people struggled to build a clear connection between data work and business decision-making.
She also wanted to strengthen her profile with a certification that demonstrated she could handle large amounts of data, and she had long wanted to live abroad.
After researching universities with strong reputations in big data and analytics, she found IE School of Science & Technology. “One day I just sat on my computer and started to look for all the universities that had high rankings in the big data and analytics world. And of course, I found IE University,” she said.
Ana visited the IE University office in Bogotá to learn more about the institution and the Master in Business Analytics & Data Science. With support from the IE University team, she submitted her application and relocated to Madrid to begin the program. She also viewed the master as a strategic way to shift industries after graduation. “One of the reasons I studied this program was to have the foundation to work in something other than banking,” she said.
How Ana’s path led to IKEA
For Ana, career opportunity came through active involvement during her studies. During the program, she connected with classmates and took part in extracurricular activities. One of her classmates was the president of the IE Big Data & AI Club, and Ana was given the chance to teach Structured Query Language (SQL) as part of an activity. That experience strengthened her confidence and reinforced her interest in working with data, while also expanding her network.
This involvement helped open the door to her role at IKEA, where she joined the Digital Hub in Madrid as a data analyst. She worked in the Physical Meeting Points area, focused on improving the in-store experience using digital tools. “My role as a data analyst… [was] to help the product teams who are creating these digital experiences, to get valuable data and measure the impact and performance of the new tools,” she said.
One of her core projects focused on store waiting times. She defined the metrics needed to understand waiting behavior and worked on the data structures, calculations, and relationships required to generate useful insights from different data sources. Ana also explained how she applied her academic training directly in the role, combining optimization techniques with the tools and frameworks she developed during the master. “With the knowledge I got from the Master in Business Analytics & Data Science*, I’m able to show the insights in the easiest way, using dashboards and visualizations,” she said.
A business analytics degree built for career change
Ana described the program as a strong fit for students from many different backgrounds, focusing less on what you have done before and more on what you are willing to do. “Your background doesn’t matter… it’s more what you’re willing to do,” she said. She also reassured future students that even if the world of analytics sounded intimidating at first, confidence comes through practice.
“At the end, you feel super comfortable with coding, with math, with everything really,” says Ana.
She emphasized that getting involved in clubs and activities could make a real difference, because her own opportunity at IKEA came from her participation in the IE Big Data & AI Club. Her advice to future students was to start building their network from the beginning, stay active, and remember that the program was designed to teach you – but required consistent effort and readiness to take on the challenge.
Since then, Ana has continued developing her career at IKEA in Madrid. She worked as a Data Analyst and progressed into her current role as a Senior Data Analyst, bringing experience in descriptive analysis, statistical modeling, and large relational databases, alongside technical skills in Python, R, and VBA and a strong focus on teamwork, teaching, and mentoring.
*During Ana María’s time of study, the program was called the Master in Business Analytics & Big Data.
