Carolin Lukas Talks About Her Route From Physics Into Product Management

Carolin Lukas loves data! In her role of a Team Lead Product Management Data, she works a lot with sourcing, evaluating and preparing data to be re-used further. However, long before Carolin stepped into Product, she was a rigorous researcher in Physics. We sat down with her to chat about what led her to Zalando and what makes her happy in her current job.

Carolin, could you introduce yourself?

I have a five-year old daughter. Originally, I’m from Bavaria, but I’ve spent almost half of my life in Berlin and abroad. I’ve been working at Zalando since April 2013, and since 2015, I’ve been in my current role as a Product Manager in Data. Recently, I took over a leadership challenge of setting up product management in our central team called Data. In my work, I’m interested in how people interact with data, what they want to achieve with data, where they face obstacles in using it, and what fears they have about data. I’m also really keen to know what GDPR has changed.

What do you appreciate about working at Zalando?

The flexibility to learn that I have here. I come from an academic background, I did a PhD in Physics. From academia I switched to e-commerce, and, before segwaying into product management, I worked as a business development manager. So, you know, I didn’t bring all the skills. But Zalando and the team have helped me develop, and I’ve always had the opportunity to go into different roles and learn different things here. I appreciated this flexibility especially when I had a kid.

At Zalando, I started off as a business development manager, but I felt like it was not my cup of tea, and when I had the opportunity to work with data instead, I took it. My lead back then was a product manager, and she inspired me to learn more about product management.

Do you ever miss Physics?

Yes, I do. What I always appreciated was the meticulousness of research. But that rigour is something that I have in my current job, too.

What does your team focus on? Why should one be excited to join it?

The mission of the Product Management team in Data is to establish an excellent end-to-end experience for analytical and data engineering use cases in alignment with the strategic direction of Zalando.

We prepare curated data sets on product and sales and we create sets of tooling to process data from business intelligence to data engineering use cases. My PMs have a knack for technology, and, at the same time, they are very humble and approachable. They are great at managing our stakeholders who also happen to be our customers. We aim to transform the way our colleagues interact with data and boost their productivity. Our work enables our colleagues to do the analysis that influences some high-impact decisions within the company. It’s also enjoyable that here you can use innovative and efficient tools.

What should a new joiner to the team be prepared for?

Be prepared to be ok with a lot of trial-and-error procedures, to stay open-minded about new things, and to not be afraid to make mistakes. We are currently trying to decide what the best way forward for us would be, but as a leader, I will do my best to make it as pleasant and impactful as possible.

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