Suzanna Beanland

"One of my personality types is “Trainer” which is perfect as I oversee training of Analysts Darktrace. This requires me to be helpful, passionate about education we're delivering, and I must be able to simplify technical information to a wide variety of audiences who may learn differently. To be a trainer, I need to be a good “Communicator”, another one of my personality types. At university, I was a student ambassador and tailed tours and presentations to groups of prospective students and parents, both of whom want to know very different things. This was transferable for my job where I have given lightning talks to my peers on unfamiliar subjects, travelled globally to teach customers on specific aspects of their network and given regular webinars to large audiences. Similarly, written communication is key as my career has involved compiling reports based on graphs and trends, writing training manuals, producing eLearning videos and creating exams. All of these must be easy to follow and contain a lot of educational information without being overwhelming. My final personality type is “Coordinator”. I’ve worked in teams of people from lots of different backgrounds, whether they be scientific, linguistic or technical, meaning there is a wealth of experience to learn from in both internal and customer facing environments. No matter the situation, I am always willing to learn new things, take on whatever work is available and provide assistance where needed. Furthermore, in all my jobs, I must coordinate my work schedule, organise other people’s schedules, complete tasks in a timely manner, all while providing a level of professionalism."

"I am the Global Head of Analyst Development at the cyber security company, Darktrace. This is a role in the Analyst Department where I am responsible for recruiting, training, and retaining talent. I oversee the global recruitment process for our team which means I often sit on interviews and get to know our candidates. If candidates are accepted, they are onboarded, assigned mentors and started on a training plan for the first few months. Their initial training is made up of a mix of videos, live shadowing sessions and hands on report writing. Once an Analyst is trained up, I am there for them as a contact who they can always reach out to for developmental opportunities.Training means educational materials and I love producing them! I have a lot of creative freedom and get to experiment with graphic design while creating documentation. However, I also love learning, and this never stops. I get to research the intricacies of network architecture and how our product integrations with other existing cyber security solutions as well as keeping on top of the ever-changing threat landscape. Further to this, I’ve seen places I've never been to and met lots of interesting people through my job.The starting salary for my Analyst role was £26,000 but I’ve had great progression opportunities throughout my time at Darktrace."

"My journey started when I finished my A-levels and went to university. I’m competitive and won’t be told I can’t do something so when I was told Physics probably wasn’t the right subject for me, I went on and got a MPhys degree! I’ve always loved learning how things work and understanding the fundamental rules around us, which meant Physics was the perfect choice. While studying for my degree, I decided that continuing in academia wasn’t for me and I wanted to go into the real world after graduation. I initially went through a lot of preparation for Medical Physics thinking this would be my next step, but when this didn't work out, I explored other options. I was open minded when finishing my degree and started to consider analytical roles. During my Masters project, as well as a summer internship prior to this, I did a lot of data analysis. Equations, numbers and graphs are something I’ve always gelled with and spotting anomalies in data comes naturally. When approached by a recruiter and asked whether I had considered cyber security, the honest answer was no, but after a little research into the field and the company I could work for, I was hooked. I joined the Analyst team at Darktrace for over a year, where I learned a lot about network fundamentals, protocols, security best practice and threat hunting. I then moved to the Education department for a few years which allowed me to build on my daily Analyst experience and train customers how to use our Artificial Intelligence powered platform. I have since moved back to the Analyst to team to help recruit, train and retain talent and support people’s career journeys.I am constantly surrounded by inspiring women in the field, such as our CEO, the leadership team and my wonderful colleagues, all from different backgrounds. I am so lucky to work for a company who believes that gender balance in the workplace is important."

"I would consider myself a creative person and when I finish work, I like to do something completely different from my day job. I have always loved playing instruments since I started to learn the guitar at 8 years old. Since then, I’ve expanded my musical repertoire and now own a large collection of instruments. My main three are piano, saxophone and guitar but I also dabble in ukulele, clarinet, flute, drums, bass guitar and banjo too. I find music a great outlet and enjoy performing in groups. Two of my favourite performances were playing in a brass band at a German music festival and playing the Pirates of the Caribbean film score alongside an army band.Another creative hobby that takes up my time is content creation for my small business, Beany Geek. This stemmed from my love of drawing and wanting to communicate science via cute doodles. My main goal is to encourage other women in STEM with the motto “You can be any geek that you want to be”. This all started with some little sketches of things you might find in a laboratory but giving them facial expressions and backstories have evolved them into a range of “STEM Friends” characters. I make these into stationery, jewellery, pins and anything else I can craft. Everything I do is handmade and fiddly so definitely keeps me busy and engaged. Finding time to fit in other hobbies such as sewing, crotchet and knitting is sometimes hard!"

"Most work mornings consist of a reasonably normal routine – grabbing a cup of tea, sitting at my desk, opening up all the tabs I will need for the day over multiple monitors and starting work. Once I start work however, my role can completely diversify depending on the day’s responsibilities!On a quiet morning, I’ll read the news to see what is currently happening in the cyber world as we get to see real threats in the wild every day and may encounter new things. I always check my calendar and emails to see if anything needs adding to my daily to-do list before I start work. A lot of my role involves meetings and calls with other colleagues around the business. Sometimes these meetings are in person which means I get the opportunity to visit other global offices. The meeting topics vary from checking in on how our individual Analysts are doing all the way up to strategising with management on how to make our team’s lives better.Because I oversee Analyst Development, this often means I create curriculums and training materials. Some days this can be working on large documents, presentations, exams or even designing certificates. Other days, I spend my time researching how things work by reading existing documentation, asking people in various departments or by simply playing around with our software and figuring things out myself so I am well placed to train up my team."

"After achieving 6A*s, 4As, 2Bs at GCSE, I chose my A-levels. As a lover of both words and numbers, I took English Language (which I view as the science of English) alongside three STEM subjects. Overall, my results were:AS level:English Language (A)A level:Mathematics (A) General Studies (A) Physics (B) Biology (B)Following my A-levels, I went to the University of York for a four-year Integrated Masters program in Physics and obtained my MPhys Physics Degree (2:1)I started my graduate job at Darktrace two weeks after graduation where my analytical mind, thirst for learning and STEM background has served me well."