How a person without an IT background went through mobile service sales, bread production, two grants at Kazakh universities, and ended up in an international company.
The truth is – when you start digging, you realize his path does not look like the standard biography of a successful person. There is no straight route from school to a prestigious university, and from there to the office of an international company. Everything is different. But it is precisely this uniqueness that grabs your attention. It all began in 2010, when he was helping to run a mobile service sales business. Simple work, nothing flashy. Clients, cash registers, reports. He did this for three years, until 2013. And around the same time, from 2012 to 2013, he was involved in managing a small bakery production. A bakery. Dough. Supplies. Making sure everything was fresh and on time. What could mobile communications and bread possibly have in common? But he told me something important: in any business, you have to count. In both places, he learned to see numbers. Expenses, profits, losses. Without that, any business falls apart.
Then came 2013, which changed his direction. He won a grant at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (KazNU). His major was Computer Engineering and Software. He moved to Almaty. And then, as he puts it, a completely different life began. Instead of bakeries and mobile phone shops – algorithms, databases, programming languages. But oddly enough, his business experience did not disappear. On the contrary, it helped him understand why all these technical things were needed. He was not just learning to code for the sake of coding; he could already see how to apply it to real-world problems.
While studying, he worked. And 2017 became a very intense year for him. From January to May, he worked as a data analyst at KTZh Kazakhstan’s national railway company. A huge structure: trains, railcars, millions of numbers. His job was to make sense of those numbers, find patterns, and prepare reports. Then, from May to June 2017, he moved to the position of chief analyst at ALC COMPANY “SVX ZHAKSYLYK”. The work there was different a smaller company, more specific tasks but the essence was the same: data, analysis, conclusions. Immediately after that, from July 2017 to January 2018, he worked as a chief analyst at LLP “AKZHOL SERVICE-CENTER”. Three jobs in one year. Different teams, different tasks, but everywhere he did the same thing: turning raw numbers into clear decisions for management.
When I asked him if it was difficult, he said: “It was hard, but interesting. Every time I learned something new about how companies work from the inside.”
In 2017, another important event took place. He won a grant for a master’s program at Satbayev University. Now he was no longer just a bachelor’s graduate but a master’s student. Deeper knowledge, more research, more responsibility.
And then his story takes an unexpected turn. In 2017, he received an invitation to study at the New York English Center. He made the decision – he went to the United States to learn English. First, until the end of 2017 and throughout 2018, he studied general English. Then, from 2018 to 2019, he switched to Business English. He explained to me why he needed this: “I wanted to work at an international level. And without English, that is impossible. Simply impossible.” He learned to speak, write emails, conduct negotiations, and understand professional terminology in logistics and data analysis.
Then came 2019. He completed an internship at Alox in Brooklyn, New York. His position was junior logistic specialist. Junior logistic. At first glance, this is not data analysis – it is logistics. But he explained to me how they are connected. Logistics is all about data. Cargo, routes, deadlines, costs. Analysis is needed everywhere. And his experience at the railway company, at the service center, and at other places was exactly about working with numbers. Add English, add the understanding of business from the time he helped run a bakery and mobile phone shops. Everything came together in one place – in Brooklyn.
A question: “If you could give advice to your past self, what would you say?” He thought and answered simply: “Don’t be afraid to try different things. Every experience will come in handy later. Even if it seems like a bakery and data analysis are far apart, they are actually about the same thing: the ability to count and make decisions.”
That is his story. No loud words, no “genius” or “prodigy”. Just a person who, step by step, used the opportunities that came his way. Grants, invitations, internships. And in the end, he ended up where he is now. Not because he got lucky, but because he kept saying “yes” and did his work.
