The Data Chief

Five Best Practices to Succeed with Data and GenAI: Lessons from Leaders


Listen Later

Key Moments: 

  • Focusing on Value with Bill Schmarzo 1:48
  • Unlocking the Collective Genius with Walid Mehanna 4:07
  • Building a Data-Literate Workforce with Valerie Logan 5:58
  • Creating a Human-Centric AI Strategy with Sadie St. Lawrence 7:40
  • Selecting the Right Tools with Katie Russell 11:23
  • Implementing tools responsibly with Robert Garnett 16:00
  • Why Clean Data Matters with Barr Moses 19:36
  • Ensuring Responsible AI for the Long-Term with Dr. Gary Marcus 25:45 

Key Quotes:

  • “Data-driven is not important. Value-driven—that’s what’s important. We should focus on value.” — Bill Schmarzo, Head of Customer Data Innovation at Dell Technologies
  • “Our role was rather to activate the organizational muscle… to try things out and tell us what has the highest opportunity and possibility.” — Walid Mehanna, Chief Data and AI Officer at Merck Group
  • “It’s really a mindset and a muscle… we need to foster this kind of lasting change.” — Valerie Logan, CEO of the Datalodge
  • “Teaching people to ask better questions is more about critical thinking than technology.” — Sadie St. Lawrence, Founder of the Human Machine Collaboration Institute
  • “We wanted to make analytics accessible to everyone, combining real-time data and intuitive tools so every team member can gain insights and contribute to our mission to decarbonize.” — Katie Russell, Head of Data and Analytics at OVO Energy 
  • As we are looking at applications of AI within our environment, we are focused first on responsibility, making sure that we have a broad enough data set when we're building machine learning models, for instance. And so that's at the heart of anything that we do.” – Robert Garnett, Vice President for Government Analytics and Health Benefits Cost of Care at Elevance Health
  • “Our world is moving towards a place where data is the product—and in that world, directionally accurate just doesn’t cut it anymore.” — Barr Moses, CEO and Co-Founder of Monte Carlo
  • “The tech policy that we set right now is going to really affect the rest of our lives.” —  Dr. Gary Marcus, Scientist, Advisor to Governments and Corporations, and Author of Taming Silicon Valley

Guest Bios 

Bill Schmarzo 

Bill Schmarzo has extensive hands-on experience in the areas of big data, data science, design

thinking, data monetization, and data economics. Bill is currently part of Dell Technology’s core data management leadership team, where he is responsible for spearheading customer co-creation engagement to identify and prioritize the key data management, data science, and data monetization requirements.

Walid Mehanna

Walid Mehanna is Chief Data & AI Officer at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, where he leads the company’s Data & AI organization, delivering value, governance, architecture, engineering, and operations across the company globally. With many years experience in startups, IT, and consulting major corporations, Walid encompasses a strong understanding of the intersection between business and technology. 

Katie Russell

Katie Russell is the Data Director at OVO Energy, leading teams of Data Scientists, Data Engineers and Analysts who are transforming OVO’s data capability. As part of a technology led business, leveraging data using artificial intelligence keeps OVO truly innovative, delivering the best possible service for our customers. 

Rob Garnett

Robert Garnett serves as Vice President for Government Analytics and Health Benefits Cost of Care at Elevance Health. In this role, he leads a data-driven organization supporting analytics and insights for Medicaid, Medicare, Commercial and enterprise customers in the areas of population health, cost of care, performance management, operational excellence, and quality improvement. 

Valerie Logan

Founding The Data Lodge in 2019, Valerie is as committed to data literacy as it gets. With train-the-trainer bootcamps, and a peer community, she’s certifying the world’s first Data Literacy Program Leads. In 2023, The Data Lodge was acquired as the basis of a newly formed venture, Data Society Group (DSG), aimed at fostering data and AI literacy and cultural change at scale. Valerie is excited to also serve as the Chief Strategy Officer of DSG. Previously, Valerie was a Gartner Research VP in the CDO team where she pioneered Data Literacy research and was awarded Gartner’s Top Thought Leadership Award.

Sadie St. Lawrence

Sadie St. Lawrence  is on a personal mission to create a more compassionate and connected world through technology. Having grown up on a farm in Iowa she witnessed first-hand how advancements in technology rapidly changed how we work and earn a living, which in turn affected the overall success of a community. Through her work, she noticed that while many organizations and individuals have good intentions when it comes to D&I in data careers, there was a lack of progress.

Dr. Gary Marcus

Gary Marcus is a leading voice in artificial intelligence. He is a scientist, best-selling author, and serial entrepreneur (Founder of Robust.AI and Geometric.AI, acquired by Uber). He is well-known for his challenges to contemporary AI, anticipating many of the current limitations decades in advance, and for his research in human language development and cognitive neuroscience. An Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU, he is the author of six books.

Hear more from Cindi Howson here. Sponsored by ThoughtSpot.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The Data ChiefBy ThoughtSpot

  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9

4.9

72 ratings


More shows like The Data Chief

View all
The McKinsey Podcast by McKinsey & Company

The McKinsey Podcast

378 Listeners

a16z Podcast by Andreessen Horowitz

a16z Podcast

1,043 Listeners

Data Skeptic by Kyle Polich

Data Skeptic

476 Listeners

Gartner ThinkCast by Gartner

Gartner ThinkCast

108 Listeners

Super Data Science: ML & AI Podcast with Jon Krohn by Jon Krohn

Super Data Science: ML & AI Podcast with Jon Krohn

297 Listeners

NVIDIA AI Podcast by NVIDIA

NVIDIA AI Podcast

343 Listeners

Data Engineering Podcast by Tobias Macey

Data Engineering Podcast

141 Listeners

DataFramed by DataCamp

DataFramed

272 Listeners

The Story by Mission

The Story

236 Listeners

Mission Daily by Mission.org

Mission Daily

220 Listeners

HBS Managing the Future of Work by Harvard Business School

HBS Managing the Future of Work

106 Listeners

Practical AI by Practical AI LLC

Practical AI

189 Listeners

Inside the Strategy Room by McKinsey & Company

Inside the Strategy Room

164 Listeners

IT Visionaries by Mission

IT Visionaries

170 Listeners

Education Trends by Mission

Education Trends

40 Listeners

The Future of Cities by Mission

The Future of Cities

75 Listeners

Marketing Trends by Mission

Marketing Trends

277 Listeners

Find Your Mission by Mission

Find Your Mission

37 Listeners

Hidden In Plain Sight by Mission

Hidden In Plain Sight

86 Listeners

Up Next In Commerce by Mission

Up Next In Commerce

136 Listeners

AI Applied: Covering AI News, Interviews and Tools - ChatGPT, Midjourney, Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic by Jaeden Schafer and Conor Grennan

AI Applied: Covering AI News, Interviews and Tools - ChatGPT, Midjourney, Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic

127 Listeners

HBR On Strategy by Harvard Business Review

HBR On Strategy

72 Listeners

The TED AI Show by TED

The TED AI Show

44 Listeners

Training Data by Sequoia Capital

Training Data

43 Listeners