Spending our time engrossed in the immediate tasks of our daily work responsibilities, it’s often easy to neglect that the person sitting beside us has a lifetime of stories and experiences that, either by chance or intention, brought them into the same open space office.

Yet there’s a comforting surprise to realizing, perhaps over a beer at the local pub, that Andrew from accounting is actually really cool.

Since starting at Brandwatch, I’ve learned to no longer be surprised when I discover that, for example, Ronnie was in a post-rock band, or that Karl and Noah are stand-up comedians. While everyone is clearly dedicated and passionate about their work, the culture at Brandwatch both encourages unique backgrounds, stories, hobbies or passions and provides the setting to share them.

Recently, on a business trip that brought me from Germany to the UK, I had the chance to sit down with Rebecca Carson (aka Bex) to hear how she wound up in the lively beach town of Brighton, UK.

Introducing Bex

For reference, Bex leads Brandwatch’s Insights team – a dedicated group of specialist analysts that conduct research and provide insightful and actionable reporting to our clients dependent on their specific needs and interests.

Her favorite food: Peanut Butter

Dislikes: Creepy whispering (especially on adverts)

Favorite thing to do: Country walks with her husband and their dog

One wish: A teleport machine so she can see her family in Australia regularly

If she wasn’t a social media analyst: Bex would run an animal rescue center

Marine Biologist turned Psychologist

Recalling her early days swimming by Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Bex tells me she once aspired to become a marine biologist. However, these dreams were stymied when she became terrified of the sea after seeing the film Jaws.

From then on out, her passion for marine biology was redirected toward humans – she became fascinated with the concepts of psychology and what drives human behaviors. For her Human Geography thesis, she studied how the spaces young teens occupy affects how they behave in social settings.

Her fascination for understanding human behavior, coupled with a background and intuitive sense for analytics, language and research, are a big part of why Bex genuinely enjoys the work she does and why she is so good at it.

A passion for cake decorating

After graduating, Bex’s career ranged from writing transcripts of court interviews to working as a market researcher for a radio station to starting her own cake decorating business.

“I decorated children’s novelty cakes. Peppa Pig, Harry Potter, and Rapunzel were my best!”

Eventually though, Bex decided that cake decorating was more of a passionate hobby than a career for her.

Becoming the Head of Insights at Brandwatch

Since then, she’s spent six years in the social media analysis business, two of which were with Brandwatch’s Insights team.

Starting as a Social Media Analyst, she now describes Head of Insights position as more of a managerial role. She loves handpicking, building and developing her team, which has more than doubled since she joined.

For her, as is the case throughout Brandwatch, growing at such a dizzying rate presents both great opportunities and challenges. One of the biggest imperatives is maintaining the culture Brandwatch envisioned in its early stages – as a relative Brandwatch newby, I hear this across a lot of departments.

Managers want to make sure that the culture remains friendly and intelligent, that employees have the systems in place to be efficient but the freedom and space to innovate and think creatively.

The Brandwatch team

Hearing the self-proclaimed data geek’s stories, I was again pleasantly surprised and intrigued by the robust background of experiences that lead to and exist behind the Brandwatch insights I regularly read.

In the seat across from me was the Head of Insights, now transformed into the cake-decorating, data-loving, creepy-whisper-hating, dog-loving psychoanalyst with a passion for creating actionable social media insights and a passionate team.

If you want to bring your unique lifetime of background and experiences to Brandwatch, I invite you to check out our careers page for open opportunities or send us a message.

Now you know™