This is a profile from the 2020 version of the DataIQ 100.
The 2021 list is available here
I started my career at Dunnhumby as a data analyst and progressed to becoming an analytics director role, going on to hold numerous leadership positions in the UK and internationally.
I first led Dunnhumby’s customer insight, price and promotions and trade intelligence services for Tesco in the UK and then went on to be responsible for the data company’s solutions in new international markets. After that, I turned my hand to media services, firstly heading up analytics for the digital media business, before leading the overall media division in Latin America. Finally, I was responsible for Dunnhumby’s customer engagement activities, covering CRM, media and loyalty services across its international markets.
I also spent several years working as a management consultant for Ernst & Young, where I led customer and strategy consultancy projects for leading energy suppliers in the UK.
In 2018, I decided to take all these experiences into a client-side role when I joined DAZN Group, the largest and fastest-growing global sports streaming service, combining my love of sports and technology.
At DAZN I head up our marketing analytics, research and planning, customer experience, and performance management functions globally. We use rich customer data from a range of sources, including the 400 million hours of sports our users stream each year, to power our disruption of the sports broadcasting industry. We are making the best sports available to fans around the world, in a more affordable, accessible and relevant manner than traditional broadcasters have ever achieved.
Establishing Dunnhumby’s media division in Latin America was a highlight. On a personal level, my family and I moved to the other side of the world, learnt a new language, culture and way of life, which was thoroughly enriching. On a professional level, I set up a business from scratch in a new and challenging industry. In doing this, I successfully built a profitable, multi-million dollar organisation by disrupting the media sector for the benefit of consumers, who received more relevant and engaging advertising from their favourite brands.
My father has always been an inspiration for me as he worked at CERN at the forefront of truly transformational innovation in science, data and technology. Throughout my career, I have also constantly been inspired by the diverse groups of people I have worked with from different specialisms, cultures and countries and the new perspectives they have brought to solving problems.
No, but then again it never does. Across the industry I hoped that GDPR would be used as a springboard for more businesses to better empower their customers with their data and encourage more meaningful communications with them to drive stronger loyalty. I only witnessed this in a small number of cases.
At DAZN we launched two new markets earlier in the year but we then achieved more progress than I had anticipated by focusing on our existing markets, driving stronger engagement and loyalty among our subscribers, which is essential if we are to maintain our rapid upward trajectory.
I expect further consolidation of data service and technology providers; last year saw big acquisitions from the likes of Google and Salesforce. The challenge now is to translate this into simpler and more connected tools for businesses to better action their data across their entire business.
I hope to see more impactful applications of artificial intelligence – this will only be possible through “explainable AI”, which will provide the necessary context and reasoning which is so often required to truly embed data driven solutions.
Finally, I expect to see further in-housing of data capabilities as businesses continue to recognise the importance of investing in data as a core asset.
Consumer data empowerment. To date most of the value of data has been generated by corporations, particularly in the adtech space. Sometimes this creates implicit value to consumers through more relevant advertising. The bigger opportunity, however, is how we give consumers this information in a digestible manner in order to help them make better decisions to achieve their budgetary, sustainability and health goals, rather just flooding them with more advertising. In addition, I see there being great opportunities to directly share the value of individuals’ data with the end user so they too can gain from the growth of the data economy which they are fuelling.
Keeping up with the pace of our organisation. We are an incredibly fast-paced business, deploying new capabilities, new propositions and markets at an incredible speed to ultimately benefit sports fans. Whenever we implement new technology, the biggest challenge is in ensuring that it can add value in the short term whilst also helping us to make better decisions and scale faster in the medium term.
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