Axel Buddendiek
Axel Buddendiek is an astronomer turned data scientist. After finishing his PhD in 2015, Axel started working in data teams at different companies, continuously learning and building up new skills. In 2022, he joined the Analytics Department at REWE Group as a senior data scientist. When Axel is not at work, he enjoys jogging, reading, and watching football.
Session
As one of Europe’s largest retail corporations, REWE Group owns and manages prominent supermarket chains such as REWE and PENNY, among many other subsidiaries. In this talk I will give a brief overview of how we introduced a formal mentoring program, Pair & Share, at the central analytics department of REWE Group with its more than 150 data scientists, engineers, analysts and other colleagues.
Before Pair and Share, there was no formal process for personal, technical or methodological growth. Although there are plenty of possibilities, further training and education was self-organized and fragmented. To increase growth among our colleagues and build and strengthen inter-team exchange, we introduced the formal mentoring program, Pair & Share.
This talk will cover a brief overview of REWE Group and our analytics department followed by a motivation for Pair & Share. Afterwards I will explain how we planned the mentoring program and defined the parameters like the matching process, the time frame and how to recruit participants. I will also share my experiences of the first six months of mentoring, what kind of roadblocks but also pleasant surprises we encountered. The talk will be concluded with an outline of how we plan to continue and improve the program.