No matter which industry someone is in, both individuals and entire companies are waking up to the reality that data must play a primary role in both career and business strategies moving forward.

Tia Dubuisson (pictured), co-founder and president Belle Fleur Technologies Inc., believes that helping individuals and business become more data driven is extremely important, and her company does just that in a variety of ways.

“Belle Fleur Technologies was birthed basically after I got a wake up call … and saw that data was really going to be driving a lot of decision-making … and that was probably a good 11 years ago,” she said. “And you’re seeing … data-driven everything … now.”

Dubuisson spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Lisa Martin for the “Special Program Series: Women of the Cloud,” during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the digital transformation and importance of data. (* Disclosure below.)

Becoming more data driven in career and business

Because of her own career path, Dubuisson has learned over the years that technology and data intersect in so many ways with other fields. She started her own career in microbiology but was married to a data scientist, and her own experience in microbiology helped her understand how a focus on data fit into other industries.

“We were doing drug discovery work, and we were going to be able to use a computer program to basically help us to narrow the focus of our drug discovery work to see which drugs would be most active before we even synthesized them,” she said. “If a computer can actually make a million different compounds in a month, I knew that was way more than me and the whole team could make at the bench.”

Through this and other experiences, Dubuisson began to see that data was really going to be driving the future. As she began to shift her own career into a more data-driven space, Belle Fleur Technologies was born out of that desire to help companies navigate their own journeys into being more data driven.

“You’ll meet a lot of good people that I think will be very happy to help steward you along the way as you try to navigate these waters, because there is no straight path,” Dubuisson said. “There is no ‘A’ plus ‘B’ gets you to ‘C.'”

Over the last two and a half years, Belle Fleur Technologies has also been working very closely with a couple of nonprofits and community colleges to develop cloud computing certificates and bachelor’s degrees to create a talent pipeline to reskill and upskill people coming from other career paths.

“We’re able to go into these different groups that we’re partnered with and actually showcase to them from an access standpoint how is tech really intersecting … with … the traditional accounting degree [or] with a traditional biology degree,” Dubuisson said. “Try to pique their interest.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Special Program Series: Women of the Cloud”:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Special Program Series: Women of the Cloud.” Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE