7. Andy Hill, chief data officer, Unilever

Describe your career to date 

I’ve had a fabulous career to date. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing people at two outstanding companies and with lots of opportunities to go overseas, living and working in the UK, Italy and in North America and travelling to so many countries around the world as part of my job. I studied geography at Oxford in the early 1990s as I was always fascinated with the relationship between people, space and time and how they play out.

I joined Dunnhumby in 1995 - an early start-up at the time, looking to explore how to use the first loyalty card data with Tesco - and I was intrigued with the possibilities. I spent 22 years there and was fortunate enough to move through the organisation in a variety of technical and commercial roles, helping to grow the company from a feisty start-up into the world’s leading customer science company. Notable roles were solutions director for the UK&I, chief operating officer Italy, and chief operating officer of Dunnhumby North America, based in Chicago.

I left in 2017 to join Unilever as the global vice-president of information and analytics, before being appointed chief data officer for the business in 2021. As CDO, I lead global teams delivering data, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities to the business, driving smarter and faster decision making. My ambition at Unilever is to power sustainable business growth through the intelligent application of trusted data, enterprise-wide to deliver on Unilever’s purpose of making sustainable living commonplace.