Russell Barton, EMEA data governance manager, Starbucks

Describe your career to date 

I’ve been at Starbucks for a year now and can honestly say that it’s been one of the most enjoyable and rewarding 12 months of my career. The opportunity to take on the newly created role of EMEA data governance manager at such a well-recognised and high-performing brand was an exciting one that has more than lived up to my expectations.

Prior to joining Starbucks, I worked for Barclays, where I had the benefit of being able to have three distinctly different career phases but all with same organisation.

Phase 1 was what could be described as a traditional retail banking role, encompassing early roles such as cashiering, through securities and mortgages and on to business banking support.

Needing a change, I took a chance and applied for a project management role, which led to Phase 2 as a project and then programme manager. I covered a wide range of projects, from organisational restructures and HR delivery to new tech platform implementation and regulatory reporting. My role gradually became more focused on data-centred projects, including a large programme covering data quality and remediation.

This led to Phase 3, looking at how data was used and supporting the development of new data-based products and services. This included the development of customer-facing materials to support the introduction of GDPR, and culminated in the design and implementation of an award-winning data ethics framework for use with new analytics and insight projects.