Lauren Walker, head of data and analytics, UKI & Europe, Accenture Song
Describe your career to date
My data career kicked off with political polling and survey research, which led me to the Clinton/Gore White House, after which I joined ChoicePoint (now a division of LexisNexis) in a marketing role. While there, I was promoted to build a new identity solution, for the public sector.
Through that experience, and ever since, I’ve been bringing together data, technology and strategy to solve business problems. I also learned how to turn data from a raw asset into a monetisable revenue stream.
I left ChoicePoint to attend Yale University School of Management, where I received my MBA. Upon graduation, I embarked on a ten-year career at IBM with senior roles in global marketing, sales leadership, consulting and M&A. Some highlights include leading the MDM business, launching the big data and analytics business in Europe and creating the Watson customer analytics partnership with Acxiom.
In 2017, I joined Dentsu International as EMEA chief data officer, where I harmonised data and digital experts to improve our clients’ customer centricity. As global COO for sales and transformation, I built a growth ecosystem (people, process and tech), which will set the foundation for delivering a superior customer experience.
Now at Accenture Song, as head of data and analytics, I have two areas of remit. One is building solutions that our internal teams can use in the delivery of our agency’s work with our clients, and the other is helping and advising brands on how they can build their own data-driven strategies, data product teams and first-party driven data architectures.
What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in this role?
My natural curiosity and tenacity have combined to push me to stay at the leading edge of where our industry is going from a holistic perspective – taking into account advancements in technology, the evolution in ecosystems and the transformation of human interaction with the increased penetration of digital.
I also think my liberal arts education, which includes a BA in political science, was actually a very good starting point for someone who moved into a life in consumer data. While many of my peers in data may have started out in computer science or data science, my start in social science/political science gave me an appreciation for the qualitative side of data, along with the statistical side.
At IBM I learned how to code, worked side by side with data scientists as well as build data products. During this time, I developed a keen understanding for data technologies, data architecture and the details on how specific technologies work to support various workloads and processes in advertising, marketing and commerce.
What level of data maturity do you typically encounter across your client base and what tends to hold this back?
Currently there is a big gap between where brands are today and what they want to achieve in their North Star visions. The changes in human behaviour brought about by digital and the desire to "replace" the cookie with first-party data has brought about a huge demand for reshaping both organisation design, processes and technology footprints. Internally we have also brought in new talent and reshaped our organisation to better harness our talent and the technology innovations to support the opportunities ahead.
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