Sophie first encountered the field during her time at HAK Frauenkirchen, where she chose to specialize in Information and Communication Technology. There, she gained fundamental IT skills and developed an understanding of how technical and business processes interact.

Since autumn, Sophie has been studying part-time in the first cohort of the Bachelor’s degree program in Business Informatics at Campus Eisenstadt. She particularly values the program’s structure: during the week, she works in the office of a bakery, where she manages a variety of business processes. On weekends, she swaps her workplace for the lecture hall and studies alongside her fellow students at the university. "We’re a very diverse group," Sophie explains. "Most of them are older than I am and have much more technical experience. That was a little intimidating at first." However, her conclusion is overwhelmingly positive:

In her first semester, Sophie studied the fundamentals of business organization, operating systems, and network technologies. She was especially enthusiastic about programming. "At some point, we become the interface between people, organizations, and IT," she says, summarizing the role of business informatics.

Sophie describes balancing full-time work and her studies as demanding, but she has found an important source of balance in equestrian sport. She spends four to five days a week at the stables, training with her own horse and gaining the distance she needs from everyday life. "Those are the hours when I don’t think about anything else."