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

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.

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