Experian Consumer Services, Chief Data Officer: Data Ethics Is About Always Doing the Right Thing

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(US and Canada) Ali Khan, Chief Data Officer, Experian Consumer Services speaks with Michael Fillios, Founder and CEO of IT Ally about his approach to data ethics at Experian and the ideal data strategy for SMBs.

With over 25 years in the industry, Khan spent the first decade as an engineer and an architect. “I really am drawn to data, and Experian has incredibly rich data of about tens of millions of consumers. And the mission here is an incredible one, which is around using data to increase financial access for consumers,” Khan says, regarding his current role as Experian’s first Chief Data Officer. “This is a data company. One of the things that makes my job a lot more fun and a lot easier is the fact that data is being embraced across the board. I’ve been given an open hand to define the data strategy and an incredibly supportive and in-sync leadership team.”

Khan decided to make data ethics the central tenet for the organization. “We’re highly aligned toward protecting data and treating it with the respect that consumers deserve. But data ethics is about going beyond that, it’s about always doing the right thing because when someone gives you data, they’re really trusting you,” he says, regarding his data ethics approach. “It’s about eliminating bias, whether it’s in constructing the data sets and the algorithms, and it’s usually the former. It’s not usually the algorithms that are biased, it’s the data set that reflects an unfair collection of data. Even if you’ve been ethical in the collection of the data and entering the data properly, you still may use it in a way that isn’t in your customer’s best interest.”

Commenting on the leadership required for a data officer to introduce the use of data to an SMB organization and how they can communicate the benefits to their internal stakeholders, he says that the first key is to not over-engineer. The second key is to be agile in data management and building data products.

“It’s particularly relevant for SMBs to build backward,” Khan continues. “So, focus on value and begin with the analytics first. What is the needle you want to move at that firm? Focus on the business and understand what those metrics are, then bring together the data to solve that problem. Think, “How do I need to combine it? How do I need to treat it?” Then think about infrastructure. Don’t lead with that.”

[This content was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]

Women’s Month Special: “Always be Yourself” Lorraine Waters, CDO, Solidatus

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(Europe) Lorraine Waters, CDO, Solidatus, talks to Michael Fillios, Founder and CEO, IT Ally, and a CDO Magazine editorial board member, about her perspective as a woman working in the field of data.

Waters shares that there are role models when she looks around the financial industry: Kate Platonova, Group Chief Data and Architecture Officer for HSBC; Jennifer Courant, Global CTO, Deutsche Bank; Elaine Priest; Sarah Walker, and others.

These role models are in senior leadership roles, and there are many more outside of financial services. She shares that she loves that these women take the time to speak at conferences, share their stories, and share their journeys. She posts on social media as it’s crucial to see more women ‘fly the flag.’ There’s nothing more encouraging than to see women reaching these top positions.

Waters advises young women professionals to “always be yourself and not what others want you to be. Be true to yourself.”

When working with colleagues, she advises, always stand up for the team, treating everyone with respect and being generous with your time and knowledge. She shares that is also important when mentoring. Those who you mentor have ambition and talent, so help them up the ladder.

Waters shares additional critical advice: “Ask for what you want and need.” She believes that sometimes, it’s difficult for women to do that. We expect people to just know what we need and want, but that doesn’t always happen. So, women need to be able to vocalize that confidently, and have enough confidence in themselves and their abilities.

Waters goes on to shares more names of those who have been an inspiration to her, helping shape who she is today. A Scottish woman named Jean Sloan, was her boss and an inspiration early in her career at Lehman Brothers. Waters worked in trade support, Sloan was the head of trade support, and according to Waters, she was absolutely incredible, standing up for her staff against the most aggressive traders. Sloan went to bat for you if you were right, Waters recalls. She always said, “Stand up for your team, have each other’s back, be kind, be supportive,” and instilled that approach in Waters.

Because no one can see everything coming up on the business horizon, Waters encourages women in data to reach out, talk to peers, become involved in some industry associations, and engage in informal conversations.

[This content was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]

The Gorilla Glue Company, Sr. Director of Data Science: Robust and Repeatable Data Reporting Improves Business Strategizing

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(US and Canada) Michael C. Fillios, Founder and CEO of IT Ally, talks to Kelly TeDesco, Sr. Director of Data Science, The Gorilla Glue Company, about her experience thus far in executing her data leadership role — a new position in the company.

TeDesco’s initial task has been meeting with colleagues to understand the business and how it’s using data today. For example, what types of questions are they answering with data? What unanswered questions remain? She is brainstorming how data science can help The Gorilla Glue Company improve strategizing, and she has a list of media projects that will help develop a year-long roadmap.

TeDesco explains that data science improves business decision making. To be effective, however, a data scientist must first understand how  a company will use its data in the future. In this way, they can affect real change rather than just gathering interesting insights. Secondly, she continues, a company needs a data science platform, but trying to understand the technology options available can often be overwhelming to define. “There is so much out there and so many choices. So, the companies at the beginning of a data and analytics journey must start with robust and repeatable reporting if it is not already in practice.”

She further shares that Gorilla Glue is in good shape in that regard — the company is already using available data combined with some good reporting — as it continues to build data literacy.

 but this helps the business get familiar with the data they have and start to build the data

Regarding hiring talent in the data and analytics field, Tedesco says  she has done a lot of recruiting. The key to knowing if you will like a career in data science is whether or not you liked the courses that led up to it. For example, is it just thinking critically about data and coding that you enjoy? If you don’t like coding, you probably won’t like data science, she advises. Bottom line:  if you’re enjoying your classes, you’ll probably like being a data scientist. Her advice for young people or professionals is to take as many practical courses as possible. Learning tools like data mining courses or programming languages like Python, etc., are extremely valuable.

She advises finding an internship, even if it’s only partially relevant, and if not an internship, there are a lot of great competitions out there that provide relevant experience and understanding of what it’s like to work in data science. Her final words of advice? “Embrace your mistakes and learn from them because we all make them. There are great learning opportunities out there, even though they might be painful at the time.”

[This content was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]

Solidatus, CDO: The CDO Has Evolved From a Reactive to Proactive Role

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(Europe) Lorraine Waters, Chief Data Officer, Solidatus, speaks with Michael C. Fillios, Founder & CEO, IT Ally, about the evolution of the role of a CDO over the years.

Waters, in the CDO role for about a decade, has her career origins in business management. This, she says, drives her commercial mindset while developing data services and data capabilities. She notes that it is extremely important for CDOs to focus on outcomes rather than just output and listen to and speak the same language as their business counterparts.

So, instead of focusing just on data quality testing and issues management, and instead of putting preventive controls in place which leads to recurring problems and remediation, Waters suggests that it is better for CDOs to be proactive. Collaborating across industries to develop best industry standards is a trend that is likely to continue, she says.

She continues, noting that the modern C-suite executive is more data-aware along with everyone else across an organization who handles data.This has made developing business cases a lot easier, and it’s now on the CDO to deliver the business outcomes.

Waters emphasizes that CDOs should be familiar with an organization’s business strategy and able to communicate at the same level as the CEO, sharing the same goals and strategies. They need to focus on preventing data issues instead of remediating them. Waters concludes by stating that this focus will achieve more sustainable results in the long run.

[This content was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]

AI for Good Foundation, Chair, Executive Committee: AI Is Not Just About Technology

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(US and Canada) Mark Minevich, Chair, Executive Committee, AI for Good Foundation, speaks to Michael C. Fillios, Founder and CEO, IT Ally, about the need for inculcating AI as a culture and grooming IT talent to create future leaders.

Minevich emphasizes that individuals who want to join the field of IT first need to learn to listen and learn to understand what’s needed to build and run successful businesses. He mentions that it’s about small incremental steps that are executed well.

He suggests that instead of just comparing the present with the past, it is necessary to look at patterns and correlations. He then says that everybody, at every stage, needs to focus on re-skilling consistently. Organizations and employers need to make sure that their employees are consistently up-skilled based on the labor market’s requirements.

Minevich maintains that education has to be customized to individual students based on AI and data, and AI has to be introduced in classrooms not merely as a theoretical concept but as an opportunity to analyze things. He opines that AI is not just about technology, it is also about such things as culture and ethics.

Next, he discusses the ways to deal with outsourcing and leveraging internal talent. Minevich admits that talent shortages are a big problem and are a driving force behind global outsourcing. But enterprises need to deal with it by beginning to implement plans for creating more key jobs in the United States. Businesses have to invest in talent, AI, and automation,he emphasizes, because offshored talent also brings about the issue of security. Minevich goes on to suggest that organizations in the US need to recruit talent from friendlier countries to be on the safer side. He then urges companies to invest in high-quality leadership and develop centers of excellence.

On the topics of entrepreneurship and venture capital, he says that it is critically important for entrepreneurs, ecosystems, universities, and talent to come out at the top. They’re also the ones who will be driving the creation of leading organizations like WhatsApp, Uber, Slack, Venmo, and Instagram, which will, in turn, lift the economy and realize digital transformation.

In closing, Minevich highlights the need for companies to be adaptable, agile, and resilient to be able to survive the upheavals in the market. They also have to consider aspects like technical capacity building, infrastructure, and cloud capabilities.

[This content was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]

Experian Consumer Services, Chief Data Officer: Cataloging Is The Starting Point Of Data Governance

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(US and Canada) Ali Khan, Chief Data Officer at Experian Consumer Services speaks with Michael C Fillios, Founder and CEO of IT Ally, about his professional journey, the mission fuelling ECS, benefits of mentorship, and challenges concerning data governance.

Speaking of his previous company Helm, Khan calls it a research and data-driven company that analyzes the political, healthcare, and financial inequalities existing in the society,  and aims to build participatory democracy. His job role there was to understand how people make decisions based on the mentioned factors and how to change them for the better. He did that by learning from elections and through general civic engagement, and by further accumulating all the data from such interactions.

He reckons thinking about the different forms of inequalities during his time at Helm, and how the COVID situation made it extremely important to address the inequalities, particularly, financial inequality.

Quoting his older child he says, “Money cannot guarantee happiness, but it definitely can eliminate several sources of misery.” To that, he adds, “Financial inclusion isn’t the be-all and end-all of equality, but it goes a long way to being there.”

He further connects the dots here and says that Experian as a customer services company strives to create financial power for all. The mission is to help people who haven’t had help before, to minimize financial inequality.

Emphasizing the importance of a mentor, Khan recalls his experience at IBM, during the early phase of his career. He talks about the knowledge management aspect at  IBM and affirms how IBM was avant-garde in terms of being remote-friendly. But most importantly, he remembers the well-built mentoring culture there.

“I realized that this was not just something that was a result of academic training and  it was a profession in the sense of being a mentor and a mentee, being an apprentice and then a journeyman moving forward to mastery,” he says.

Khan mentions how he has benefitted from having mentors, especially senior architects who compelled him to think in new ways. He dedicates his learnings to the mentors at IBM, who taught him to question assumptions, legacy, and infrastructure driving to create out-of-the-box solutions.

He highlights that mentoring is an essential requirement at Experian where agility is the prime driving force. “Products launch from just an idea to the market,” says Khan.

He sheds light on Experian Boost that allows consumers to add additional data to their credit files to improve their credit score and states that the boost has contributed 90 million points since its inception, helping the under-resourced community with credit access. He refers to this as a start-up environment in terms of action, and mentoring plays an important role here.

Khan then moves forward to discuss the data governance journey of Experian and says “Part of the challenge and opportunity of Experian is that it’s highly federated. We have distinct units which have incredibly rich and well-curated datasets. Having a federated model creates opportunities to combine the datasets, resulting in value addition for customers.”

Emphasizing the importance of cataloging data, Khan states, “Cataloguing is incredibly important. That is the starting point for any data governance.” The focal concern here is understanding the state of data infrastructure in terms of management and recognizing the datasets as assets.

He ensures that data ownership is not a concern at Experia as they are well aware that data is not entirely technology and that customers are the real owners of certain data. He pinpoints the idea of consumer permission data which maintains that customers will have to permit the company, to access the data.

He further mentions that it is the responsibility of the steward is to curate the data keeping in mind, the quality rules and expectations enveloping the data. Considering these as ‘fairly standard’ challenges, Khan assures that Experian Consumer Services commits to resolving such challenges on priority.

[This content was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]

AI for Good Foundation, Chair, Executive Committee: Companies Must Shift From Only Automation to Digitalization

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(US and Canada) Mark Minevich, Chair, Executive Committee, AI for Good Foundation, speaks to Michael C. Fillios, Founder and CEO, IT Ally, about the need for digitalization for SMBs, a potent cybersecurity strategy, customer experience, and the need for future talent to work alongside AI for better performance.

Minevich says that today, SMBs shouldn’t think about simply analytics but look at it as all-around digital AI adoption, and it’s the same for global companies and governments. Beyond that, the journey has to be expedited.

“We need to bring the whole ecosystem — our startups, our partners, our vendors —  and the rapid full digitalization is going to also safeguard us from vulnerabilities. Companies must shift from just simply automation of the existing processes to digitalizing their operation,” he adds.

Minevich emphasizes that it’s not just about adopting new technologies. Instead, small businesses have to engage customers through personalization, intimacy, and customer experiences. “Customer experience actually overrules efficiency today,” he adds. “If you have two options right now, efficiency and customer experience, I would pick customer experience.”

It’s important to combine and deploy technologies that are necessary for businesses, employees, and customers, and they’re going to support better decision-making, he adds. “You cannot focus on just AI and data. You’ll have to make sure that there are sensors that are sensing all the information. So if somebody walks into your boutique, you want to have sensors available.”

Moving to the topic of automation to drive efficiency and reduce costs, Minevich advises that employees should have access to the right tools — they need not be expensive — but they do need to be repeatable, agile, and scalable. This automation should not only create a better customer experience but also reduce labor costs.

Regarding cybersecurity, Minevich says that organizations need a clear strategy. “Get all information about where the critical data is being stored. Make sure you have redundancy built-in, the ability to archive information in a number of locations, remote capabilities, and also be in sync with government authorities. You cannot look at cybersecurity as just one issue. We have to have a discovery capability to constantly discover threats in specific data or the person inputting data. We have to have ways to secure this information using the best practices and the right tools and the right technologies and the right people.”

It is also necessary to monitor changes with the application of AI. “We have to allow artificial intelligence to do the job,” he says. “There’s no way that a human being is able to permute through all of those combinations specifically in the post-quantum world,” he says.

On the topic of talent, Minevich says that the shortage of talent has worsened post-COVID. While more professionals are looking at remote work — and organizations are encouraging this — remote employees need to develop certain skill sets and train on tools to make virtual collaboration more seamless.

He cites a Google study that reveals that remote work had no impact on effectiveness, performance ratings, or promotions for individuals and teams. This calls for better application of AI and letting AI do repetitive and functional jobs, he says.

“Humans need to recognize that they have unique skills and they could work together with AI instead of being threatened by AI,”Minevich says. “We have to focus more on creativity as human beings. We have to focus more on multidisciplinary knowledge of AI. That said, business strategies, industries, and public policies are essential. We have to leverage the machines to replicate our imagination. We have to elevate humans to higher-level tasks.”

[This content was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]

Future Proofing Your Business: ComSpark Innovation and Technology Summit 2021

Panelists Michael C. Fillios (Founder and CEO of IT Ally, LLC.), Kevin Piket (Business Development Executive at Ascend Technologies), Dale Miller (Senior IT Business Partner with ChromaScape), Michael Swenson (Executive Director at IT Ally Institute) and John Connors (writer and commentator) share their expertise for future proofing your business using a cybersecurity program.

[This video was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]