Toby Sykes, head of data, Altruistiq

What has been your path to power?

I have not had a typical path so far! I am a self-taught coder, having always been interested in technology, from my first ZX Spectrum to coding on BBC Micros and building my own PCs. After university, I went to China to continue studying martial arts where my teacher asked me to help him build an online Kung Fu encyclopedia. I learnt how to code web sites and this started my journey into real technology. After returning to the UK, I qualified and started working as a freelance web developer.

Since then, I have moved from helping clients re-engineer global processes supported by large technology implementation to architecting large-scale data architectures and MI solutions. Eight or nine years ago, I was introduced to Hadoop and became excited about larger-scale data processing and the possible value it could unlock. This prompted me to explore analytics and value creation, so I moved to McKinsey QuantumBlack, where I built a team of more than 100 data engineers globally, implementing data products to support AI at scale.

After an amazing five years, I wanted to do more to help the fight against climate change using data and AI. I switched to an early-stage start-up, Altruistiq, where we use data to track, measure and report on corporate impact to the environment and provide a platform to set data-driven targets and recommend/manage reduction initiatives!