Galina Russell is the Chief Operating Officer of REEF Energy at REEF Technology, a Miami based technology start up focused on transforming underutilized urban spaces into neighborhood hubs that connect people to locally curated goods, services, and experiences.

Ms. Russell as part of the leadership team, is at the frontier of establishing partnerships with public and private sector organizations to pioneer the transformation of traditional parking infrastructure into dynamic hubs that address the diverse needs of surrounding communities in a sustainable way.

Topics:

Significance of International Women’s Day (IWD)Cultural and Societal Influences on Women Seeking Leadership in the WorkplaceDissecting Traditional “Female vs. Male” Leadership QualitiesEmpowering Women through Mentorship

Welcome to Ivy Podcast! On this Executive Leadership Podcast we interview top executives from Fortune 500 with a focus on strategy, innovation, negotiation and everything about leadership.Our Podcast for Executives features Thought Leaders who share practical insights for effective leadership, continuous innovation and strategy execution.Ivy Podcast is a rapidly growing Executive Podcast, which covers topics like Hiring and Retention Strategies, Talent Acquisition, Innovation, Digital Transformation and much more.On this Leadership Podcast, you will find conversations with the most accomplished executives from Fortune 100 companies. We aim to cover a broad range of industries and create a learning platform for the most ambitious and high potential professionals who are looking to learn from the most accomplished Executives on this Business Leadership Podcast.

Enrique is an HR, Tech and Future of Work expert and keynote speaker and founder of Hacking HR, a global learning community at the intersection of the future of work, technology, business and organizations, with thousands of members from all over the world. Enrique is one of the top 100 HR global influencers. Enrique was the founder and CEO at Management Consultants, a firm specialized in Human Resources in Venezuela. Before Management Consultants, Enrique worked in the telecommunications sector as a Senior Project Engineer for Telefonica and several other companies. He is also the cofounder of Cotopaxi, a recruitment platform focused on Latin America. Enrique is a guest author in several blogs about innovation, management and human resources. Most recently Enrique worked as an advisor to the Chief Human Resources Officer at the Inter-American Development Bank. Enrique is a Fulbright Scholar, has over twenty years of experience and is an Electronic Engineer with an Executive Master’s in Public Administration from Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

Topics:

Transition from electrical engineering to HR. What is Hacking HR and biggest challenge about putting together a global HR conference. In your own words, what does the phrase Human Resources mean to you?Common myth or misconception that people have about HRHow has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your thinking on the future of work.What are some of the skills we need to develop to prepare the workforce for the disruption of exponential technologies?What kind of technology do you find the most interesting for HR these days? What HR technologies are you curious about and WHY?How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Enrique Rubio: [00:00:00] What I want you to do with that. Instead of focusing on the 50 calls a day, I want you to talk to five people a day and make sure that you are making a difference in the lives of those employees. When you talk to them, meaning asking them what they need, how you can support them, being there for them, creating the platform and the infrastructure for them to succeed and thrive at work.

[00:00:21] Thank you for listening to Ivy podcast, where we feature weekly leadership conversations with thought leaders and industry experts. Now here is your host, Cesar Romero.

[00:00:37] Cesar Romero: [00:00:37] Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Ivy podcast. In today's episode, we're going to be diving deeper into the world of HR. And if you are a professional in HR or really anyone that's interested in putting people first. I think this episode is for you. We're going to be talking mainly about what are some of the things that need to change in HR and what are some of the things that you could do to better prepare for that future that's already here and today I'm excited to bring on. And Enrique Rubio, who is an HR tech and future of war experts and keynote speaker. And he's also the founder of Hiking HR, which is a global community of HR professionals that is at the intersection of the future of work technology, business, and organizations with thousands, thousands of members across the world. He's also the co-founder of Cotopaxi, which is a recruiting platform focused on Latin America and Ricky has written multiple blogs on innovation management and hand resources. Enrique, thank you so much for being on the show today.

[00:02:05] Enrique Rubio: [00:02:05] Thank you so much for inviting me. I am really, really excited about this conversation. So thank you.

[00:02:12] Cesar Romero: [00:02:12] Yeah. So before we dive into HR, I want to start with your background because. I understand that you were not always in HR in that you got started as an electronic engineer. Let's talk about that. Like what prompted you to make that transition and what was the aha moment?

[00:02:38] Enrique Rubio: [00:02:38] I lost my wa

Dr. Serena Huang is the Global Head of People Analytics at the Kraft Heinz Company. Prior to Kraft Heinz, she was the Global Talent Analytics Leader at Koch Industries. Previously, Serena led People Analytics/Strategic Workforce Planning & HR Operations at General Electric and advised Fortune 100 clients on mergers & acquisitions efforts at Deloitte.

Serena is an invited speaker on people analytics, employee experience, digital transformation, and the future of work. She is passionate about leading change, building high-performing global teams, and helping business leaders see data as an asset in large organizations. She excels at showing executives the “art of the possible” through both 1-on-1 dialogues and facilitated hands-on workshops, and co-creating customizable, scalable solutions in predictive analytics in HR, Workplace Strategy, Supply Chain and Litigation domains. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics with specializations in Labor Economics and Econometric.

[00:00:26] Angela Alberty: [00:00:26] Okay, so thank you everyone who is joining us today. Serena, I'd love to start this off with a quick introduction on yourself before we dive into the podcast episode and some more in-depth questions.

[00:00:40] Serena Huang: [00:00:40] Hello everyone. Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening, wherever you are. My name is Serena Huang and I lead Global People Analytics at Kraft Heinz. I'm based out of Chicago.

[00:00:51] Angela Alberty: Oh, wonderful. So when we had you lined up to be a podcast host, I must say I was super impressed with your profile online and your entire background. I'm really hoping that out of today's episode, We can make a future of work and big data people analytics, a more understandable concept to a larger audience.

So that's really the premise behind today's show. And so why don't you tell me a little bit about your background, where you come from and what's led you to your passion on people and people analytics.

[00:01:23] Serena Huang: Of course so excited to be here and chatting about a topic really dear to my heart. I am a PhD Labor Economist by training.

So economics is about supply and demand and labor economics. It's the same concept applies specifically to human capital. It's really prepared me well for the journey I've been on in people analytics. I started off in consulting, after a few years I went in-house and started building people in the Lennox teams from general electric to coach industries. And now at Kraft-Heinz.

[00:02:00] [00:01:59] Angela Alberty: Wow. Pretty impressive. So if someone outside of the industry and completely new to this, you know, space that you're in said, Hey, Serena, tell me in your best definition, what is people analytics, how would you respond to that?

[00:02:15] Serena Huang: There are a thousand definitions you'll see out there.

One of my favorite is really using data analytics to make better decisions when they comes to people in the workplace, using those and analytics to make better decisions when it comes to people in the workplace.

[00:02:27] Angela Alberty: Wow. Okay. That's a very simple concept. So how do you think that that kind of influence can really change the employee experience for a new person and really help build a company's brand, or is there any examples that you can give us on how that sort of relationship can work from employee to company branding course?

[00:02:53] Serena Huang: So, if you think about employee experience, and I'll give you a brief definition, employee experience is a super hot topic and it has been, based on the 2020 LinkedIn talent report, they indicated talent employee experience was the most important trend and that was before COVID.

So think about how much more important than this going forward. I'll make an analogy. employee experience to HR as similar to customer experience for sellers marketing. So it's how employees experience their work life, put simply. So if you think about the onboarding expe

Ray’s journey to the C-Suite consists of successful enterprise and start-up experiences at JP Morgan, Time Warner, ConsumerNet, 24/7 Media, ORB, V12 Group, V12 Data, and True Influence. 

Ray Estevez is the Chief Data Officer at True Influence. Estevez provides data and technology leadership for the continued development of an innovative, robust, and secure data and information technology environment throughout the organization. The primary responsibilities for this office encompass a wide variety of strategic data and technology issues: governance and policy, information technology protocols, and the True Influence Information Technology organization. 

Previously Estevez was the co-founder and Chief Information Officer of V12 Group. Where he helped grow and develop the company until it was acquired by Datamentors in 2016. The combined company was rebranded V12 Data. He has 30 plus years of leadership experience in the fields of data management, information technology, and digital marketing. 

As the CTO of ConsumerNet Estevez was instrumental in the development of their Email database technology and revenue growth. This led to the company being acquired by 24/7 Media Inc., for $52 million dollars (http://tinyurl.com/qylqopj). After executing a smooth integration of technologies and personnel, he went on to lead the technology and operations of the 24/7 Mail division. He was appointed an executive member of the 24/7 Media mergers & acquisitions team. 

Estevez is a member of Forbes CIO Network, TECHLATINO, and serves on the Board of Advisors of Rebel Visions Corporation and NextVision Sales Institute. Ever an advocate for his team, he encourages education, open communication, and work-life balance. He is a mentor to several college students and prior colleagues that are now CEOs of their own companies.

[00:00:27] Ray Estevez: Hi, Jahn, thank you for inviting me for the podcast. My name is Ray Estevez and I am the chief data officer at true influence. They've been with the company for about two years now and I'm actually moving on to a chief information officer role. So my responsibilities are expanding, which is pretty, pretty cool.

[00:00:45] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:00:45] Awesome, Ray, thanks so much for finding time to join us on the podcast. Perfect timing right? With the change in the role and responsibility, congrats on the promotion or whatever that is or changing responsibilities. Tell us a little bit more about, by your background, where you come from in your career path and then the one to spend some time talking about your current role.

[00:01:07] Ray Estevez: [00:01:07] Sure. Well, I am a proud product of New York City's inner city school, public school systems. I went to public school, public university, and it just goes to show you that if you give an individual an opportunity, they really can Excel. I came from a very tough area in Manhattan, Harlem. I'm sure you've heard of Harlem New York and had a great upbringing. Tufts streets, but it made me tough, it made me want to succeed and achieve great things. So I stayed focused on school, got my degrees. And then just hustle my way through careers and promotions just by a lot of hard work.

[00:01:54] Jahn Karsybaev: [00:01:54] Oh, that's exciting. I can definitely relate to the upbringing and the kind of the big city life as well. So that's great. Thanks for sharing that. As far as your current role and responsibilities, or the company in general, tell us a little bit more about that. What falls under your purview? What are the problems that you currently saw solving? What are the most exciting projects you have underway?

[00:02:18] Ray Estevez: [00:02:18] Yeah. I started, like I said, about two years ago, I was brought in to help sort of expand the data practice within the organization. So I actually made a move, a pivot in my career at that time from a chief information officer, chief technology officer background, to more of

In the span of just a year, Joel Lalgee has become one of the top voices for recruiters to follow on LinkedIn. Having garnered a massive audience while establishing his own live-time series, Joel has interviewed some of the most renowned figures in the recruiting and staffing space. Join us as he guides us through the characterization of the modern day recruiter and best tips for establishing your own personal brand on LinkedIn.

Episode transcription:

[00:00:27] Angela Alberty: [00:00:27] Okay, so excited to have this podcast today. Joel, I have been waiting for several weeks now to interview. You were one of the first people that I reached out to when I made the announcement as podcast host at the Ivy Podcast. Go ahead and give the audience a brief introduction.

[00:00:43] Joel Lalgee: [00:00:43] Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to be here. A little bit about myself. I am a recruitment head Hunter agency recruiter. That's been in the business for about five years, and I've recently made a transition into the content marketing world, helping agency recruiters build a personal brand, particularly on LinkedIn. So I've spent the last 18 months building a pretty decent sized brand on LinkedIn. Got a lot of experience with that. And so now I'm helping other people to do the same thing. And so, yeah, again, just thank you for having me on the show.

[00:01:27] Angela Alberty: [00:01:27] Oh absolutely super excited for this, because I think that the audience can leverage a lot of the insight that you provide. And one of your, I guess, feel good stories is how you found it and landed yourself into this role. But we can get into that in just a little bit. We're going to start with some fire and eyes questions. And I feel the vibe today, you're black, I'm red public fire knife questions because it's the ring of fire ring of fire questions, but it's also to break the ice. So we want to just get to know you a little bit better and ask you super random questions along the way. So are you a coffee guy or a tea guy?

[00:02:03] Joel Lalgee: [00:02:03] Oh, well, so I was born in England, so I still have a little bit of tea in me. Yeah. So my whole family is tea, but I definitely like coffee in the morning, coffee in the afternoon. High energy coffee.

[00:02:18] Angela Alberty: [00:02:18] Yeah, me too. Me too. I've got that simple American coffee plantation lineage of coffee drinkers. So actually, my followup question, which you may have just answered is the most interesting fact about you that most people wouldn't associate to Joel.

[00:02:34] Joel Lalgee: [00:02:34] Yeah. I would say being born in the UK. So I was born in England. And I moved here in 2000. And so I've, that's why the British excellent. When you're in middle school and you have a different voice and everybody else doesn't go well. And so, in any attempt to be cool, I started saying what's up man and hey everybody, before it I'm sounding American.

[00:03:05] Angela Alberty: [00:03:05] Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So this one's pretty interesting. What's the worst job you've ever had.

[00:03:12] Joel Lalgee: [00:03:12] Yeah, that's a great question.

[00:03:13] Angela Alberty: [00:03:13] You could, that's right. So something maybe…

[00:03:19] Joel Lalgee: [00:03:19] In a call center, for about six months and I was working for one of the big, well, I was working at an agency that represented one of the big banks and I would literally call people and say, hi, it's Joel, I'm representing so-and-so bank. Do you have a couple of minutes to chat about your recent experience and I'd run them through a script. And, I did that and I actually was good at it, but it was. You can imagine. I mean, it's yeah. You're cold calling people for reasons that they don't even care about. So it was, it was tough.

[00:03:54] Angela Alberty: [00:03:54] I can see how that may be set the foundation for a recruiter Joel, because that's

Lindsay is recognized leader in the healthcare and insurance sectors. Since 2010, Lindsay has been part of the senior leadership team at Wunderman Thompson Health, a health care marketing and advertising agency that combines strategy, creative, data and technology to build health care brands and inspire consumers and professionals. Areas of focus span the payer, provider and technology landscape and include consumer data and insights, competitive intelligence, brand direct marketing, customer experience, and sales optimization.

Lindsay is a Mentor at MATTER, a health technology incubator helping entrepreneurs with early-stage companies go-to-market. And he is on the Board of HMS Federal which provides services for prevention and detection of fraud, waste and abuse in the federal healthcare system.

Previously Lindsay held senior executive roles at Weber Shandwick, Gorman Health Group, Healthmarket, and Celtic Life Insurance. Early career experience included Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Lindsay has a Masters in Health Administration from Washington University inSt. Louis and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Northeastern University in Boston. He is a frequent speaker and author on topics in healthcare, insurance, marketing and sales. Originally from New York, with stops in Boston and St. Louis, Lindsay is now a deep-rooted Chicagoan.

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Lindsay Resnick: Every innovation doesn't have to disrupt right there. There could be, yes, there are inventive innovations and disruptive innovation, but there's also innovations to do existing things, better move things along a maturity curve. When the organization is ready to be able to change the way you're doing something. So yes, it could be something very new. And it could be something you've always done, but now have figured out a way to do better.

[00:01:03] Lindsay Resnick: Hi, I’m Lindsay Resnick. I'm executive vice president of Wunderman Thompson health, which is part of the WPP network of companies[00:01:12] Jahn Karsybaev: Awesome. Lindsay, thanks so much for finding time to us on the Ivy podcast today. Very excited to start 2021 with this conversation. Tell us a little bit more about your background and your highlights from your career. And then I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about your current role.

[00:01:28] Lindsay Resnick: Sure. So, I spent the first half of my career on the health insurance, and healthcare side. Interestingly, and I know we're going to take the conversation later to the current day. But I did way back start at Northeastern university in Boston, which is famous for its co-op program, which really got me started in healthcare where you go to school, for six months, and then they place you in work where you think you want to go. And I played around with accounting. I played around with marketing and finally found healthcare, and have been in healthcare ever since with blue cross blue shield and some commercial health insurance organizations. And then about halfway through, and I've always had responsibility for marketing sales, sometimes compliance, and then about halfway through my career, I flipped over to the pure marketing and advertising side of things. And then for the last 10 years I've been at Wunderman Thompson health, which is a marketing and advertising data-driven organization that are part of that organization just focused in healthcare.

[00:02:55] Jahn Karsybaev: Awesome. Wow. That's exciting. Thanks for sharing with us a little bit by your backgrounds, in terms of your current role, what falls under your purview and share with us anything that's interesting from that particular space?

[00:03:06] Lindsay Resnick: Sure. So Wunderman Thompson health cuts across the entire healthcare spectrum part of our organization is more heavily focused in the pharmaceutical side of the business. My gro

Nadesha Ranasinghe, VP of Offer Engine Development at Accelya, oversees the architecture, development, delivery, and optimization of Accelya Offer Engines (FLX Merchandise, FLX Shop and Price, FLX Availability Calculator, and FLX Schedule Builder), ensuring all engines are highly performant and ready for massive scalability. 

Nadesha joined Farelogix in 2009 as a database administrator and was promoted within a year to Director of IT, a role he held until he was appointed VP of Offer Engine Development in 2018. As Director of IT, Nadesha focused on infrastructure operations, ensuring that all critical technology environments – including the systems hosted at the offsite data center, databases, and network infrastructure – were operational 24/7 x 365. He also led change management, orchestrating the release of new code into different environments, including QA, UAT for customer testing, and Production; and ensuring the scalability of key technology platforms. Nadesha was also responsible for the company’s security infrastructure, ensuring compliance with all industry security mandates, and implementing state-of-the-art internal security controls to prevent breaches. Under his guidance, the IT team also managed the development of the Data Tier of Farelogix’ flagship technology, ensuring a seamless interface between applications and databases using its Open Connect. Nadesha led the support team as well as local and offshore help desks; was responsible for maintaining the QA platform used by other stakeholders at Farelogix for testing; and guided the company’s BI and Data Science efforts. 

Prior to joining Farelogix, Nadesha was a software specialist at the University of Miami and held several other roles in project management and database engineering. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science and an MBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Miami.

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Nadesha Ranasinghe: One topic. I think that's pretty important for us. That is something we've been focusing on is just optimization. So if you write your own applications, it's something that you have full control over. Then by going back and taking a look at your application and seeing whether Al algorithms can be optimized.[00:00:20] We are finding that, you know, there's potentially massive savings there, right? Because if we can take our code and optimize it and maybe make it run 20, 30, or maybe even 50% faster, what that does is it saves us 20, 30, 40, 50% on our infrastructure or cloud hosting costs. So I think it's something that, you know, everyone should kind of be.[00:00:40] Taking a look at it from at least the executive should be taking a look at it from that perspective, because it's, it's pretty powerful.[00:01:11] Hi, I'm Natasha Rhonda singer. I'm the VP of Offer Engine Developmen at Accelya.[00:01:17] Jahn Karsybaev: Thanks so much for finding time, joining us on the Ivy Podcast today. You know, we're glad to connect with you at the beginning of the year, start of the new periods, you know, try to put that whole pandemic, everything behind us.[00:01:31] Tell us a little bit more about yourself, about your background, and then, I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about where you're currently working on.[00:01:38] Nadesha Ranasinghe: Sure. Sure. And thanks, Jahn, for hosting me here. I sincerely do hope 2021 is going to be completely different from 2020. I can tell you from a travel industry perspective, that's where we work in the travel space, we are seeing things, you know, getting a little bit better, but it's a long road to recovery.[00:02:00] I think for us, just in terms of, you know, getting everyone comfortable with flying, getting business, traveling back to where it needs to be, but we're optimistic that 2021 starts that journey for us.[00:02:11] So my background really, I'm kind of all over the place. I just like technology. But I really was specializing in database, specifically Mi

Michelle Bazargan has a unique and diverse leadership background spanning startups and complex enterprise organizations across numerous industries and sectors including Technology, Wellness, Automotive, Finance and more. She inspires a new way of business thinking to balance putting people first, challenge outdated rules and systems, create resilient and sustainable business models and legacies. Her experience spans executing business innovation, product and marketing strategies in both startups and enterprises by placing focus on the one commonality everyone has – Our customers, employees and partners are all diverse humans. When people feel equal and included, they are empowered to contribute to driving change, creativity and innovation and impact business results and revenue.

Her baseline of struggle and possibilities is different, as she escaped a revolutionary war and came to the U.S. with $500 and unable to speak a word of English. The experience built a foundation of resiliency, reinvention and purpose to help others face fears, adversity and believe in their strengths. Passion fueled her to create a technology business from the ground up with a successful exit.

She is obsessed with inspiring people to keep it real and believe in themselves and speaks at events like TEDx on The Value of Human Connections. What lights her up is contributing to Children’s Shark Tanks Innovation programs, running innovation bootcamps for schools and universities, advocating for diversity and STEM and sharing perspective on Forbes Council, Huff Post, Podcasts and other platforms. She is also an athlete and believes the commitment and discipline to taking care of your health first is foundational to everyone’s success in leadership and life.

Episode transcription:

M: Hi everyone. My name is Michelle Bazargan. I'm excited to be here to kick off 2021. I am currently at Gartner helping clients prepare for the future, think about the future. Be more innovative. Think about the workforce strategy. I also have a company called Align Innovations and I'm very passionate about diversity and inclusion, the actionable way. So I do a lot of speaking engagements consulting around that and also help a lot of startups as well. Also brings that in Michelle.

J: Thanks for joining us. So the podcast to kick off the 2021 on the right note is very exciting to host you and talk a little bit more about all things, diversity inclusion, the law, the workforce innovation and a lot of that great stuff, very prevalent and relevant topics to especially in the current times. Tell us a little bit more about your backgrounds, where you come from your career path, and then I'd love to spend a couple of minutes talking about your current project, for sure.

M: Yes. so I actually have a really diverse and different background and I try to keep it front and center because it keeps me humble. And my family does it if I don't. So, I'm a very proud Iranian and American, my family and I actually immigrated here from Tehran, Iran. We, as a little girl, escaped a war, crazy in the middle of a winter storm, we were on a bus. We got smuggled out of the country, machine guns pointed to our faces. So, but the game of survival and being resilient became very clear to me as a child, and just like many other immigrants from a lot of different countries that have all come here to the US we didn't speak English very well. We had very little money. It was the point where we would put food back in the grocery line. We also were severely judged because of our names, our accents. And people lose sight that we're all from somewhere, right? No one, everyone is an immigrant. If you do an ancestor.com DNA test, you'll see that you are from somewhere. So people lose sight of that. As a child, I've found people went heavily into the media and believed what the media set there was a Iranian in us hostage crisis. And so we had to actually change our identity as Iranians,

Dr. David A. Bray has served in a variety of leadership roles in turbulent environments, including bioterrorism preparedness and response from 2000-2005, time on the ground in Afghanistan in 2009, serving as the non-partisan Executive Director for a bipartisan National Commission on R&D, and providing leadership as a non-partisan federal agency Senior Executive. He accepted a leadership role in December 2019 to incubate a new global Center with the Atlantic Council.

He also provides strategy to both Boards and start-ups espousing human-centric principles to technology-enabled decision making in complex environments. He was also named a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Human-Machine Cognition in starting in 2018. Business Insider named him one of the top “24 Americans Who Are Changing the World” under 40 and he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum for 2016-2021. From 2017 to the start of 2020, David served as Executive Director for the People-Centered Internet coalition Chaired by Internet co-originator Vint Cerf, focused on providing support and expertise for community-focused projects that measurably improve people’s lives using the internet.

He also was named a Marshall Memorial Fellow and traveled to Europe in 2018 to discuss Trans-Atlantic issues of common concern including exponential technologies and the global future ahead. Later in 2018, he was invited to work with the U.S. Navy and Marines on improving organizational adaptability and to work with U.S. Special Operation Command’s J5 Directorate on the challenges of countering misinformation and disinformation online. He has received both the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award and the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal.

Episode transcription:

D: Hello. I'm Dr. David Bray, a director at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center. Thanks so much for finding time, join us on the podcast today to excited to host you here at the beginning of 2021. I’m looking forward to just like everybody else put the 20 behind us and focus on kind of the new period.

J: So that's exciting to have you here. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background, where you come from career wise and a little bit more about your current role?

D: Sure. The short version of my background is that I fell in my head at an early age and that made all the difference, but the slightly longer version would probably be my background. It's kind of eclectic. I was fortunate enough that I was good with computers at an early age. So good that actually led to the government offering me a job when I was 15. I actually had to get a work permit because I was technically, younger than the legal age to work in the state that I lived in. That led to me working initially first at a physics facility. This was back in 1993, where they were modeling electrical. They were actually using electron beams or trying to understand subatomic particles, neutrinos and quirks. And so I got involved with trying to model. What would happen with the electron beam and what might be done with the electron beam, if different physics experiments were done fast forward, later when I was 17, got called down to the principal's office, everyone's like. And it was really four individuals offering me a job at a place called the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). It would involve classified work involving satellites tied to at the time what was called the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. And finding civilian purposes. And so one project, I got to be a part of picked up crop growth from space, tried to predict famines in advance and try to be ahead of the curve to try and help people there. But then another thing that I actually got to lead was demonstrating a prototype of could we pick up forest fires from space and try and model the wind conditions or foliage conditions and try and guess where things were going to go. So that was kind of no

Elaine re-joined RB as Chief Insights & Analytics Officer in November 2019, tolead both the consumer insights and data analytics teams. Passionate about people and consumers, she is leading RB’s efforts to always Put Consumers First, via expansive consumer-centric thinking and ‘humanizing data’ through the digitalization of insights. She is a firm believer in the power of connecting all sources of data and insights about consumers and categories, with analytics playing a key role in building data-driven decisions in-market close to consumers. A key part of her role is to accelerate the digital and data transformation of the group, building insights &analytics as key enablers of digital marketing & eCommerce. This is Elaine’s second stint at RB, the first being in 2001 when she spent 6+years in a variety of roles spanning the Global Category in UK, and Geographies.Prior to re-joining RB, Elaine was Chief Strategy & Insights Officer at Danone for3 years, where she led a company-wide charge towards a more agile & digital approach to insights. Elaine also spent 9 years at Kraft/Mondelez, as RegionalConsumer Insights & Strategy Director for Asia Pacific, and Global CIS Director for the Biscuits category. Elaine started her career at market research agencies including Kantar and Ipsos, and has a PhD in Marketing from Monash University in Australia. She is originally from Singapore, and has lived in Paris and London.

Episode transcription:

F: Thank you for being with us today. Elaine.

E: I've been looking forward to this happy new year.

F: Awesome. Just to get us started, tell us a bit about yourself and the role that you play at RB.

E: Sure. Yeah. Мery happy to be here today. So my name is Elaine Rodrigo and I'm chief insights and analytics officer at RB Reckitt Benckiser. Which means I'm responsible for the entire function across the group, first of all, the business units. So everybody who works in the consumer insight area.

F: In most mature organizations understand how to leverage analytics for knowledge discovery, whereas fewer are able to consistently aim this discovery in the right direction, which is also an impressive analytics that may be functionally useless. What strategic steps would you recommend when designing analytics processes that would help avoid the use of analytics for analytics sake?

E: Okay. Now I think it's a great question. And maybe I'll tell you a little bit about my background, which also kind of almost defines, I guess, where I start. And I'd say that my starting point is never the analytics, so I always start from a business question. What's the insight that you need to drive and answer that business question, and then the analytics that, that is required in order to inform it, but maybe if I look at the, I guess the way that I've developed my career and learning over the years, as well as I started off in a very analytical space. So I started off as a PhD student and constructing structural equation models. So really deep into building. Building an analytical model. And then after that, I actually started my career when I left university and I went into a market research agency. So this is like in the 1990s now. And that's when it's about consumer, it was about consumer insights. It's all the insects and the consumer and needs and what's going on there. So I shifted gears to thinking about that. And then actually I joined RB the first time around 20 years ago in a client role. And that's when you realize when you come into an organization that the whole point of the insight is to drive business decisions. So therefore I kind of came around into that. And then finally, over time as analysts and analytics, I guess, became more important even in large organizations around what we call driving. Fact-based thinking, data-driven thinking it's come around. So I feel like I've kind of gone round circle and that's why now I take everything from a lens. So believing that.