VoxCroft's Up-and-Coming Renaissance Women

Rebecca is a walking contradiction: She is a self-proclaimed introvert that flies all over the world to visit friends. She’s a digital nomad who loves nothing more than staying in her apartment in Cape Town. She’s a senior analyst as one of the youngest people on the VoxCroft team. She loves soccer but is still a Liverpool supporter.

She balances all these contradictions like she manages her soccer career, travels and demanding work at VoxCroft. We caught up with her on her return to Cape Town following her month abroad in Argentina, Brazil, and the UK working remotely.

“My soccer season was over, so I could travel. I’m usually in Cape Town for long periods, and it was nice to go somewhere else for a bit.”

Having a flexible work environment allows her to live this lifestyle: “Argentina is in a similar time zone to the U.S., so it was easy adapting my schedule to engage with our U.S. team on my current projects.” Rebecca is the lead for VoxCroft’s health and humanitarian portfolio, bringing her education in public health policy to bear. “At the time I was working on an ongoing project to monitor hate speech escalation in the DRC with the U.S. team.”

We asked Rebecca what the hardest thing about working as a digital nomad was: “Explaining what I do at VoxCroft in Spanish was a new challenge. My work is very cross functional, and when you are meeting new people it’s hard to explain it in one sentence. But it’s really not that out-of-the-norm for me, I’ve never really lived in one place for long.” As the daughter of a diplomat, she followed her mom all over the world to different postings, eventually landing in Cape Town.

“The best advice I can give anyone who wants to try it is to have somewhere to come back to. I have my apartment in Cape Town, and it gives me a sense of grounding to be able to return here.”

Rebecca’s rise in the company to her current position is a result of her ability to work with data and communicate effectively: “If someone wanted to become a senior analyst at VoxCroft, I would suggest enhancing your data science skills. Having a strong technical background is critical, and I find that the writing only improves with practice. I’ve been lucky to have Casey (Casey Schimdt, CEO) and Emilia (Emilia Columbo, Lead Analyst) guide me toward becoming a better analyst. I can hear Casey demanding ‘but what does this mean’ or ‘what does this say about the dynamics’ or ‘what does that say about the outlook going forward?’’ when I’m working on an analytical statement.

We asked Rebecca what she enjoyed about the job: “Two things, the flexibility and the feeling that I’m really making a positive impact. A lot of companies allow remote work, but then demand that you be in front of your computer for set hours. In my position, I know what needs to be delivered when, and no one is going to demand that I work at a specific place or at a specific time. So I can fly on a Monday and then put in a 12-hour sprint to get a report to the design team by Wednesday.” She continues: “Working on projects in the humanitarian realm makes me feel like I’m doing something important. I’m a perfectionist through and through, and knowing that the highest level decision makers are going to be relying on my analysis makes the extra work I put in feel justified.