October 13, 2026
Imagine fielding questions about your career from a different group of curious high school students every five minutes. That's what Ana-Daniela did during PreparationTech's AI Skills Day on October 2, 2026 in Amsterdam.
Ana-Daniela is a Risk Officer at Adyen who experiments with AI tools to understand how they can help her team with our everyday tasks. As part of Adyen's Merchant Operations AI team, she focuses on testing and implementing smart automation to streamline risk operations, save time, and improve the company's processes.
She earned a Master of Laws in Legal Technology from Utrecht University and an Undergraduate in International and European Legal Studies at The Hague University. Since then, she focuses on where technology meets regulation. After analyzing EU data governance for the European Parliament and crafting AI governance frameworks for a multinational, she now focuses on ensuring that rapid innovation never comes at the expense of human safety or consumer trust at Adyen.
Her advice to high school students?
"The most important thing high school students can do right now is stay relentlessly curious. AI is here to stay, so it’s essential to stay on top of new developments and observe how it influences our daily lives. But true success comes from understanding both sides: knowing where AI brings genuine value and where we must maintain healthy skepticism.
You don't need to fit into a single mold. AI is transforming almost every field imaginable, from medicine and environmental science to law, finance, and the creative arts. Your main job right now is simply to find the area that excites you and delve into it. For anyone eyeing tech or tech-adjacent jobs, AI is already an integral part of the daily workflow. Start playing with new AI tools, explore practical use cases, and make an effort to understand how these technologies actually work. When you combine tech literacy with human intuition and domain passion, you position yourself to lead in an AI-driven future."