Daniela Pak-Graf

After finishing her masters in Applied Mathematics - she started a trainee programme with an austrian insurance company. Within the two years of the programme she got into project management as addition to her maths background. The projects brought her to South Eastern Europe. After completing the programme she switched to doing actuarial consulting in Germany with one of the big five consulting companies. Needing some kind of "break" and having had enough of constant traveling she completed her teachers training certificate in maths and history while working as a teacher. 

During the next 7 years she had the joy of becoming a mother of two girls. Being someone who is always looking for new challenges the next career switch was on the way when she was asked if she wanted to return to the insurance business (risk management) where the was holding the deputy risk management function. While planning a project for introducing Data Analytics/Big Data/ ... into the company she was asked to lead the newly foundend Merkur Innovation Lab. Starting a corporate start-up within an insurance company was full of ups and downs but she got the company going and is now leading a team of 11 people of different backgrounds as well as managing innovation projects within the mother company with a strong focus on data.