Anna Russo, global corporate director of data science, Gucci

Describe your career to date

I am a data leader with over 10 years’ experience in data science applied to various industries, including luxury, healthcare, automotive, pharmaceutical, ecommerce, travel, and media.

I hold a BSc and MSc in mathematics from Federico II of Naples, where I specialised in optimal control applied to epidemiology. I later completed a PhD in computational biology from the European School of Molecular Medicine in Milan, where I focused my research on cancer genomics and epigenomics.

During my PhD, I had the opportunity to work with large data-sets, perform statistical analysis, program in multiple languages, and develop machine learning models. This sparked my interest in the field of data science, leading me to apply for Faculty AI fellowship in Data Science in 2016, in London.

After the fellowship, I began my career as a junior data scientist at QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, where I progressed to more senior roles and applied my knowledge to various industries including pharma, oil and gas, and automotive.

In 2018, I joined Channel 4 to learn production best practices and then, in 2019, I joined Skyscanner, where I developed data science products for the travel metasearch using deep learning, designing and analysing experiments, and creating end-to-end automated scalable and tested pipelines.

In 2021, I joined Gucci, where I am now the global corporate data science director, kickstarting the data science unit, hiring, mentoring, and leading a diverse team of data scientists and ML engineers across multiple locations and developing the brand data science strategy.