Having graduated in maths back in 2003, I wanted to apply the computing and modelling skills I'd gained to something beneficial to society. I'd always found geography and earth sciences interesting, and with the climate crisis burgeoning I decided to study for a higher degree in environmental water management. I wasn't clear at the time where this might lead me, but it turned out to be somewhere pretty good.My career began at HR Wallingford, where I honed my programming skills working on some of the largest flood risk projects in the UK and Europe, including the National Flood Risk Assessment and Thames Estuary 2100. I then moved to JBA to work on JFlow, our GPU-accelerated hydraulic model. This is the software used to create our flood maps, from our flagship 5m UK data to our 30m global data and everything in-between.A couple of years after joining JBA we began developing flood catastrophe models, which captured my interest then and has done so ever since. The combination of sophisticated mathematical modelling methods applied to extremely large data, all for the benefit of people ranging from homeowners in the UK to farmers in India, is what keeps me coming back for more. Getting these models to run at the level of detail required for flood, while also producing answers quickly, is an immense but very rewarding challenge. 15 years later, I'm Product Owner for JBA's modelling platform and still loving it. I'm able to remain reasonably hands-on in the technical detail, while also having the opportunity to provide significant input on JBA's vision for the future, all the way up to board level. Helping identify opportunities for innovation within the industry, ensuring JBA models remain at the cutting edge of catastrophe modelling science, is a great place to be.