Nanna wanted to stand out from the crowd – it paid off
A month before defending her Innovation Management thesis, Nanna Fischer Olesen walked in the door at Novo Nordisk for her first day in the job she had wanted for years.
Nanna Fischer Olesen always had a clear idea that she wanted to set herself apart from the crowd and work for a large, international company with Danish roots that somehow contributed to helping people. She found just that when she had her first day as a Scrum Master in the Manufacturing IT department at the Novo Nordisk Headquarter.
The job she wanted the most
‘I thought it was pretty crazy that I was able to go straight from the university to having the job I wanted the most,’ says Nanna Fischer Olesen and deduces why she got the position.
‘In my final semester at SDC, I got an internship position at Novo Nordisk, which unfortunately had to be cancelled, but meant that I got in touch with the right people at the company, who believed in my competences, interests and personality, so when my current job was posted they thought I was a good match for the position,’ she says
A people servant and a trouble shooter
Nanna Fischer Olesen’s role is to help her team roll out a manufacturing execution system, PAS-X for the purpose of automating a range of processes at Novo Nordisk production sites in Denmark, France and the United States.
‘A scrum master at Novo Nordisk is a people servant that helps the team move forward by implementing a range of agile principles and methods. You must be good at trouble shooting and removing obstacles that prevents the team from working efficiently. Besides that, there are a lot of project managing tasks, such as planning, stakeholder management, coaching, facilitating workshops, meetings and events. In my case even though I don’t work directly with technical solutions, I must understand the field, have the ability to manage many different tasks at once and, perhaps most importantly, not be afraid to reach out to people’ explains Nanna Fischer Olesen.
Shaped her professional profile during education
Nana Fischer Olesen studied International Business in Asia on her bachelor, but she wanted to divert away from the path that many of her fellow students chose, which was usually finance in some variety, she explains.
‘I wanted to stand out from the crowd and be able to offer a future employer something different and that is when I came across the Innovation Management programme at SDC. Until then I hadn’t considered dealing with innovation, but as I familiarized myself with the programme, I realised that it was a great match for my interests,’ Nanna Fischer Olesen says.
Throughout her time at SDC, Nanna Fischer Olesen, continuously steered the focus of her academic assignments towards engineering, digitalisation, and project management, and on the third semester, she pursued an internship with Schneider Electric, because it provided her with the opportunity to familiarize herself with a range of new IT systems and sharpen her technical profile.
‘I believe it is extremely important to follow your interests and gain as much hands-on experience as possible, while still at university. Also, I believe pursuing opportunities to set myself apart from the crowd along the way has really paid off,’ says Nanna Fischer Olesen.