Arran Bardige, Executive Director, Data and Insights, Audience, Storytelling and Publishing, The New York Times

Describe your career to date

I started my career writing short prompts to get people all over the world to do simple tasks. At the time, this was called “crowdsourcing” and it was used to accomplish jobs that humans could do rather easily (like identifying objects in a picture) that were really hard for machines. The results ended up fueling AI models and creating massive training datasets. In that job, I learned three things: How to code; how to communicate simply; how to understand the basics of machine learning. 

From there, I brought crowdsourcing to SEO, enabling large retailers to optimize their catalogs of hundreds of thousands of products quickly. It turned out incredibly successful, but I was eager to expand beyond SEO. 

I was recruited to lead data at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and ended up leading strategy for the sites’ redesign. I knew I needed to better understand the business world to have more impact, so I left to get an MBA while continuing to volunteer. I worked with The Women’s March, cheetah conservation and organ donation. I also joined the board of Mother Jones. 

After grad school, I spent time as a venture capitalist before coming back to analytics and strategy. I led international analytics, research and insights for The Guardian, helping them figure out how to expand around the world with a focus on North America. In 2020, I moved to The New York Times where I work with the newsroom, audience and product teams.