Meet Maria!

Maria has been working at Sectra since early 2013, but recently, Maria ventured into a new and exciting position as an Internal Application Specialist. She is the first to assume this role at Sectra and works in our pathology department. Her responsibilities now include product communication from a user perspective, where her input will be crucial in streamlining the usage of our products. The users, in this case, are both our end users externally, but also our Application Specialists as well as Project Managers internally.

"We want to make it easier for all to adapt to a more streamlined way of using our products to get the most out of them."

She expects that the most challenging will probably be to find the golden path between what will be best both from the end user perspective and from a deployment and maintenance perspective. "This is a bit new for Sectra, to have stronger recommendations and avoid adjusting too much to every customer’s wants. We hope our customers and Application Specialists alike will learn to trust the standardization and the process."

She is highly involved in the Sectra One Journey* and right now, her days are filled with best practice work for workflows, worklists, and worklist templates, customer meetings to get feedback, and also back to her 'Sectra roots' of working with the user documentation.

Her favorite aspect of this new role is to again be able to influence the development of the product while remaining in close contact with both the Application Specialists and our end users.

What do you do when you're not working?
"These days most of our free time is spent on our children’s activities; soccer, floorball, and horseback riding. My daughter is a caretaker of a horse, so a lot of time is spent at the stable on weekends. When I do have time for my own hobbies, I do gardening. Especially cultivating edible plants in our greenhouse. I'm not into growing flowers!” She laughs. “I also enjoy going on forest walks. Particularly during fall, when I can pick mushrooms there! Knitting is another great interest of mine. It helps me unwind in the evenings."

You came from the Biotechnology industry originally - how come you started working at Sectra?
"Well, it's a funny story. Yes, I used to work within biotechnology, producing cells which in turn produced antibodies to be used in clinical trials. Especially targeting cancer treatments. My husband, Fredrik, who already worked at Sectra at the time (probably as one of Sectra’s very first remote workers) was supposed to quit Sectra since we had moved to the south of Sweden.

But he had a change of heart, so instead, I joined Sectra as well. For a while, before we could realize the move back up to Linköping, we had a hectic family life where I would take the train up to the headquarters in Linköping at 5 AM every Monday and come
back home Wednesday evening. Then, on Thursday mornings it was Fredrik’s turn to travel up there and then be back home on the Fridays. It was like having a long-distance relationship despite sharing a home and having small children together! Crazy days but it worked since we knew it was only for a limited period."

What do you like most about working at Sectra?
"It's truly fulfilling to have the opportunity to meet and work with our users and work with products you are truly proud of. There are times when motivation wanes, but then I usually bring out one of my favorite memories. It was just after returning from Sectra's wonderful 40th-anniversary celebrations conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Despite the exhaustion from the journey, I had to catch an early morning train the next day to reach a customer in the south of Sweden. I'll be honest, I wasn't particularly thrilled about conducting a training session on that specific day. However, everything changed once I arrived. It turned out to be an incredibly positive day, and I specifically remember one radiologist trying out the 3D mouse. He got so ecstatic that he literally got up and started jumping around! That sure made it feel totally worth it going there and filled me with so much energy. It reminded me of how I appreciate this job, even on the most tired days."


 

Interviewer: Malin Barwén, Content Manager for My Sectra

*The Sectra One Journey is designed to enhance the overall customer experience with Sectra and enable customers to fully maximize the functionality of the Sectra systems. With a more focused and mindful approach, we carefully consider the entire customer journey, addressing current challenges and working towards more efficient and improved solutions. This approach is supported by individuals like Maria, who play a crucial role in developing and communicating best practices.

You can find our educational product videos, part of the Sectra One Journey, here: 
E-Learning - Sectra Global Courses - Sectra One Journey