Karine Serfaty, chief data officer, The Economist Group

Describe your career to date 

The first chapter of my career was in business strategy in a global consultancy (OC&C Strategy Consultants), and at The New York Times, where I was really lucky to join at a crucial inflection point in the digital transformation journey. I took my first data leadership role there in 2016 and my team and I got to develop the path to double our digital business.

We drew on predictive data science models, big data analytics and customer research to understand what audience groups and growth really underpinned our economics, research their needs and pain points, and then test our hypotheses. That work shaped me as a data leader as it showed me the power of joining up different approaches to design innovative solutions with huge business impact. 

The transition from there to leading data was organic as I already worked at the intersection of strategy and data. I then developed my leadership skills, and upped my technology knowledge, over the next few years, in order to lead and deliver the data agenda in three different data leadership roles at The New York Times, ITV in the UK and the Economist Group. Those roles had different focuses – respectively redirect, accelerate and build - and have rounded me out as a data leader.