Andrew Isenman, head of technology, Azure and data, Heathrow Airport

Describe your career to date

On reflection, my career spanning over 27 years can be characterised by a drive for technology, analytics, and innovation. Having been at Heathrow since 1996, my career took a turn towards emerging technology once I completed my engineer apprenticeship. This is when I joined Heathrow’s technology department, and I primarily concentrated on billing and reporting systems as part of the wider airport operational systems. 

In the two-year lead-up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic programme, I experienced my first introduction to data and analytics systems by focusing on establishing the necessary technology to become a fully-fledged Olympic venue, in support of more than 15,000 athletes from 206 nations travelling via our airport. 

This experience incentivised my career turn towards innovation, where I took the organisation through enterprise digital transformations ranging from introducing smartphones to cloud computing and rebuilding our web presence to navigating the challenges arising from integrating social media. 

Driving digital change has since been my main agenda and I have allocated a special focus to the data arena. As part of this agenda, I led the creation of a central technology platform and managed the delivery of a new target operating model with a large focus on data literacy and culture. Over the past 12 months, my focus has turned to writing Heathrow’s first business-wide data strategy and setting up the Heathrow data hub, which acts as a central enabler for the data and analytics teams across our organisation.