Dan Taffler has spent two decades demonstrating how data, when tied directly to strategy, can be a fundamental engine for business transformation. For example, during his tenure at Reach, he built the organisation’s first data and AI strategy, function, and roadmap, turning an underleveraged capability into a core competitive advantage.
Under Dan’s leadership, AI became woven into the fabric of the business: improving editorial productivity, creating new revenue streams, and reshaping how the organisation interacts with its audiences. His vision extends beyond tools or platforms and became about moving from a siloed, reactive model to a culture where AI enables creativity, responsiveness, and growth at scale.
“This submission has great examples of capability expansion, team growth, and deliverables. The advanced tooling used to enable the business is exemplary with lots of detail on real business improvements.” – Judges’ comments
Delivering Measurable Business Value
Taffler’s leadership is defined by impact. and his team’s innovations have created annual multi-million-pound revenue growth while driving operational efficiency:
- More than 2 billion annual page views and 300,000 new registrations, powered by advanced personalisation and content recommendation systems.
- 30% increase in editorial productivity and 24% uplift in click-through rates, thanks to data-led optimisation.
- Industry-first AI platforms, including:
- Guten: a generative AI editorial platform used daily by 2,000 journalists, now being commercialised.
- Slingshot: a breaking news tool that reduced speed-to-publish times by 2,000%.
- Next Best Action: a hyper-scale personalisation engine directly responsible for a 4% uplift in page views.
Building Teams and Cultures that Scale
Across his career, spanning top data roles at Medivet, Co-op, Systemax, and most recently Reach, Dan has consistently demonstrated the ability to create enterprise-grade functions from scratch. His teams have generated more than £70m in net present value across industries, while pioneering new approaches to predictive analytics, business intelligence, and data science.
What sets Dan apart is his philosophy on leadership: treating data professionals as creators, not simply technical executors. This ethos has fostered high-performing, multidisciplinary teams where product management, engineering, and analytics integrate seamlessly to deliver lasting transformation.
As colleagues attest, Dan’s ability to champion his teams and create a friendly, inspiring environment has been as central to success as the technologies themselves.
Championing AI as a Strategic Technology
Dan is vocal in framing AI as a general-purpose technology, comparable to electricity in its transformative potential. Yet he grounds this analogy in pragmatism: by creating AI products with the business, he has fostered deeper, more grounded conversations at the executive table.
This ability to bridge strategy and technology has made him a technical leader and a trusted business partner at board level, helping organisations see AI beyond hype as a practical, scalable engine of growth.
A Worthy Winner
For his pioneering work in embedding AI at the heart of Reach plc’s strategy, his track record of measurable business impact across multiple industries, and his enduring commitment to building empowered, creative teams, Dan Taffler exemplifies what it means to be a data and AI leader in Europe today.
