bloom: Marinke Van Laer
If we can draw a common thread 🧶 in Marinke Van Laer's life and work, it is this: balance ⚖️. Balance between IT and art. Between curiosity and helpfulness. Between making choices and letting the coincidences of life happen to you. Between acquiring knowledge and sharing knowledge.
Opportunity
For about two years now, Marinke Van Laer has been working as an SAP Analytics Consultant at Flexso. Although she says she rolled into IT rather by accident. "I studied graphic and digital media and did vacation work in an IT department where, among other things, I had to enter all the administration such as sales orders and invoices into the systems. When my student job was over, they offered me a job as an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning, nvdr) trainer," the 32-year-old quipped. "I hesitated because maybe I wanted to continue studying. At the same time, it seemed exciting, challenging and a great opportunity. After all, it is not always easy to get a job in this sector without an IT education. So I took the plunge."
"I find it clever that companies dare to give opportunities to people who don't actually have the right knowledge or degree, but who stand out because of their enthusiasm and potential."
"I immediately threw myself at that ERP system and so gradually began doing ERP implementations and training," she continues. What fascinated her about the job? "On the one hand, the versatility of the system. On the other hand, also the human connection: by optimizing business processes, you make work easier for the people who work with them." Marinke also drew this satisfaction from the training courses: "The participants had no experience with the system yet. I really enjoyed guiding them at their own pace and sometimes being able to reassure them in case of problems. I was their mainstay so to speak."
So IT was not passed down to her with the spoon. "My mom and dad have always had 'regular' jobs," she tells us. "My brother is a bricklayer, my one sister is a baker and the other an occupational therapist. Those are completely different professions. So I haven't really had a role model in IT. So I find it clever that companies do dare to give opportunities to people who don't actually have the right knowledge or the diploma, but who stand out because of their enthusiasm and potential."
He who does not dare, does not win
After six years, Marinke felt it was time for another new step. "Until then, I had always stood between IT and the end user. Sometimes I had to work very closely with analysts and developers and that piqued my curiosity: how are those systems actually made? What is involved in the background?" she explains. So she enrolled in a VDAB training course in SAP Development.
"That was a very challenging course," she reflects. "I applied with no programming knowledge, but I thought 'he who doesn't dare, doesn't win.' I took the admissions test, wrote a cover letter, was allowed to come for an interview, and so I got in step by step."
" I applied with no programming knowledge, but I figured 'he who doesn't dare, doesn't win.'"
"I learned a tremendous amount there, although I think that was mostly due to my curiosity and motivation," the SAP consultant continued. "My curiosity drove me to get to the core of those systems. Once I knew how everything was put together, I realized that I wanted to leave this more to the purely technical people. So I started looking for the golden mean: the technical as well as the functional. And so I joined Flexso and SAP Analytics, where I now also get to think with the customer about strategic operational solutions."
A helping hand
That Marinke is curious is beyond question. She balances that hunger for knowledge nicely by helping others as well. "I get a tremendous amount of energy from that," she replies when we ask her about that trait. "Not only from helping people, but also companies to help - especially in times like the COVID crisis - make more strategic decisions and more data insights," she echoes. "So much data is thrown in, but in the end, often little is done with it, so you miss opportunities. Helping companies make strides in this is something I find fascinating and gives me satisfaction."
That trait also typifies her in her personal life, she continues. "Friends and family know that I am ready when help is needed. I feel free to throw around my own schedule to lend them a hand."
The art of slowing down
IT is not the only thing that makes the data analyst's heart beat faster. Marinke, meanwhile, is in her seventh year of ceramics at art school. "I love the balance between the two," her eyes twinkle. "At my job I have to be analytical, while at art school I can just be much freer. I do try to make my artworks technically challenging, but at the same time it gives me a certain peace by looking at things differently. It's not just making things, we really work around themes that allow you to express more of your personality in imagery," it sounds.
"At my job I have to be analytical, whereas at art school I can just be much freer. I do try to make my artworks technically challenging, but at the same time it still gives me a certain peace by looking at things differently."
In her final paper, she intertwined IT and reality. "I took the VDAB training as the starting point for my final paper because it represented a big change in my life for me," she explains. "The theme was the real world versus programming. Programming is all around us. Since I started programming myself, I see that the real world and the IT world are intertwined and I tried to express that in my artwork."
How she constructed the ceramic pieces? "I first wrote down what typified the two worlds for me. The real world represented the raw, the pure and nature. So I chose stones for that. Whereas programming is just very geometric and repetitive. For that then I chose small pyramids. I made the stones out of clay, hollowed them out and cut them in half. I placed the small pyramids inside them to make one image."
(Re)building dreams
"Ceramics is a slow and long process, which has taught me to be patient," Marinke says. "A lot can also go wrong. So I sometimes had to accept that things don't always turn out the way you envision. They can warp, crack or discolor. And sometimes it's just those coincidences that just make it beautiful."
She also takes that mindset into her work. "I'm more patient now. I'm better able to accept the fact that you can't change some situations. A working day has eight hours, so if you're working on four or five client projects at once, you have to be able to accept that you can't help every client right away. Finding that peace in that, I think that's a great lesson that I take with me," she smiles.
"It's an ongoing process, but I'm proud to be renovating the house on my own as a woman."
A lesson, by the way, that also comes in handy in her other passion project: the house she bought on her own when she was 28 and is remodeling. "Buying that house was an exciting step. At first I wondered what I had done, but when I do something, I throw myself 100 percent," she echoes. "I drew all of my house in 3D in SketchUp to figure out where I wanted to go. Then I made a plan of action: what do I want to change structurally? What do I want to give my initial budgets to? It's an ongoing process, but I'm proud to remodel the house on my own as a woman."
Again, this is all about balance for Marinke: "At work, I am often at the computer. While remodeling, as with ceramics, I can work with my hands. That combination between the physical and the mental helps me develop further."
The next step
How she looks to the future and the challenges in her path? "Being so helpful, I need to learn to monitor my own boundaries better. That's my biggest challenge," the consultant nods. "In addition, I want to expand my knowledge even more, to become more confident as a consultant. Especially in my first job, I felt I had to prove myself as a young woman against trainees with more years on the clock," she clarifies. "I'm more sensitive to that because everything I do I want to do 100 percent well."
"I try not to skip steps, but take things slowly. Sometimes opportunities also fall to you unexpectedly, I have noticed"
"In the future, I see myself putting more effort into knowledge sharing again. To transfer the knowledge I am gaining now to new people," Marinke continues. "But everything in its own time. I try not to skip steps, but take things slowly. Sometimes opportunities also fall to you unexpectedly, I've noticed." She also has a new art course in mind: "I started the free graphics course, now that I've graduated in ceramics." And the house? "I give myself two more years to finish it," she laughs.
The next training will start on Oct. 23, 2023. In this training you will see what goes on behind the scenes of SAP. Interested? Click: VDAB training.
