We want to blaze new trails together.

Diana, your life has taken some interesting twists and turns.
(Laughs) You can say that again.

You were born in Peru, then grew up and went to college in Venezuela, and earned your doctorate in Spain. And now you’ve been living in Stuttgart since 2012. Which place do you consider “home”?
That’s a tough question, but in the meantime it seems to have answered itself.

What do you mean?
Whenever I’ve been travelling for a while and then return to Stuttgart, I feel like I’ve come home. So the answer to your question is Stuttgart. And working at Mackevision has only reinforced this feeling.

How so?
Because I also feel at home in my job.

Was arriving at this point a long process?
On the contrary – it happened incredibly fast. Even I was surprised at how quickly it went!

So you were fully integrated from day one?
On an interpersonal level, 100 percent. It took longer to master the job itself, of course. The first two months – all I can say is, “wow!” I had to learn so much, it was a bit of a shock. Some days I asked myself, “Diana, what are you even doing here?” (laughs)

What are you doing here?
My title is Team Lead Pipeline.

And what does that mean exactly?
Fifty percent of my time is spent on managing the team and all the organizational aspects, and the other 50 percent I work in development. At the beginning, though, I spent almost all of my time working on the practical aspects of programming. That was necessary for familiarizing myself with the content and workflows.

What kind of content does your department handle?
Every day, we ask ourselves the question, “How can we automate our work processes to make life easier for our artists?” Our objective is to make as many tools and as much data as possible centrally administrated. Among other things, this prevents certain things from being done twice.

Your professional background was in a completely different field.
Yes and no. I studied Computer Science, and after I finished my doctorate I worked as a software developer for a corporate consulting firm in Spain. After that, I worked at the film academy in Ludwigsburg, Germany, for six years in research and development, in areas such as facial animation. But you’re right, in that job my focus was not on programming.

Why did you want to make a change?
When you work in research, your fate is not entirely in your own hands. The projects in this field are almost always of limited duration. And when a project is finished you have to look for a new one – and hope that it also gets funding. After six years, the prospects were not great. So I thought to myself, this is a good time to do something new.

And you landed at Mackevision.
Right – I had met a pipeline architect from Mackevision at the FMX Conference in Stuttgart. And that’s how the initial contact was forged.

Had you heard of Mackevision before that?
Are you kidding me? I’ve known about Mackevision since my first year in Germany. The company has made quite a name for itself in our field.

But now you don’t have anything to do with facial animation.
Yes, that’s true. Right now we work almost exclusively with the automotive industry.

Doesn’t that get boring after a while?
Boring? No, it’s never boring here. Especially since we never work on the same thing for more than two weeks. But you’re right that there aren’t limitless possibilities for visualization. Despite all the possible variations and different components, a car is still a car. And it will always look like a car.

Would you rather be working on a broader range of products?
Generally speaking, with more diversity comes more independence. But the takeover by Accenture and the increased market access means that we are on the right path. It’s great – we would very much like to make our tools available for other products.

Would that be easy to do?
No, I wouldn’t say easy. It would be very challenging, in fact. But that’s what makes it exciting. Each and every one of us here is a developer at heart. We want to blaze new trails together and maintain our technology leadership.

What has changed now that Accenture is involved?
I can’t really say, because I started in 2018 at almost exactly the same time as the Accenture takeover. Of course there are a lot of changes coming at us, but that’s part of the job. And I think that the overall atmosphere at Mackevision is very open and positive.

Why do you say that?
Mackevision tries to actively foster the professional development of its people, and I don’t just mean in terms of technology. We have regular meetings where we talk about what direction we’d like our careers to take. There are also opportunities to attend seminars. In my case, that’s meant training in areas like team leadership, which has been very important to me.

So you’re well equipped for your role?
Let’s say I’ve already seen and experienced a lot. This has broadened my horizons and might also help me to understand and relate to different perspectives – especially since we are becoming more and more international. And I also want to do my part to maintain the special atmosphere at Mackevision, in spite of how much we’ve grown.

How would you describe that special atmosphere?
The things that are possible here in software development – that’s not something you see every day! That’s the technical aspect. But what really sets us apart is the special energy that flows throughout the company. We have a lot of young people who are all very passionate and unbelievably talented. It’s a real privilege to work with them.