My Success Story as an FDM Returner | Lana Sidorova

Lana Sidorova joined FDM after moving her life and family to London four years ago. Today, she shares her journey of getting back to work and the achievements and challenges she faced along the way.

I moved to London with my family four years ago, due to my husband’s job relocation, and soon began my job search to launch a career in the technology sector. The process was very frustrating, despite my extensive experience in digital business analysis, agile project management and having an MBA degree in InfoSys from a reputable school in the US.

After several discouraging months of rejections, I came across FDM’s Returner Programme and applied the same day. It felt amazing when I received a call the next day inviting me to participate in the assessment centre. My experience in the FDM academy was very positive. The training was carefully designed to refresh my skills and get me up to speed with the newest technologies and industry trends. The trainers were extremely knowledgeable and supportive, and it felt great to learn alongside the fellow friendly returners and to share my journey with them. It really helped boost my self-esteem and made me feel confident about returning to work.

I have now been with FDM for three years and during this time I have had two placements; one with a global investment bank and one with an insurance company.

During my first placement as a Business Analyst/Project Manager, I played an instrumental role in migration of agency’s futures derivative business from their legacy platform to a modern technology. I managed a team of 10 BA’s and coordinated 70 downstream dev teams across the globe. As a result of my work, there was a 100% participation in multiple pilots which led to a very successful and seamless implementation of the programme. Additionally, I managed the Brexit programme where I established and managed agile delivery framework and facilitated adoption of the agile delivery scrum methodology by the programme teams.

When placed with the insurance firm as a Programme Manager, I was a key contributor for delivery of UK Data Privacy/GDPR programme. I successfully implemented Data Life Cycle Management solutions for the removable media and external file sharing. My main stakeholders were the COO, CRO, Data Privacy Directors and OPS Directors.

Looking back at my personal journey until now, my proudest moment is being able to start my career from scratch every time I moved to a new country (and I have done more than once) and always remaining positive throughout. My career break has made me more resilient, more resourceful and also more creative – and these are the skills that I constantly use in my work.

If I could give a couple of tips to those looking to return to work, these would be:

• Always stay positive
• Be open-minded
• Be ready to learn

FDM will support you every step of the way. Learn more about our Returners Programme.