Assia Abada

Assia Abada, Global Senior Vice President Innovation and Data Science Strategy, Choreograph

Describe your career to date

My journey has covered supply chain optimization to revenue management for REITs and airlines, CRM and loyalty and marketing technologies and advertisement technologies. I focus on data in all its multidimensionality, mathematical optimization and applied mathematics.  

  

I finished my PhD in 1997 covering operations research in the field of artificial neural networks, as a pioneer in today’s AI. My first role was for a supply chain software company where I was to develop and optimize global software solution mathematical algorithms. I was rewarded with a patent in the field of optimization integrated to business intelligence.

  

I became the director of revenue management in 2004 for a real estate investment trust (REIT), managing multiple assets across different market-regions and improving revenue management software solution optimization capabilities and features. 

  

I became a senior director of another revenue management and business intelligence in 2008, where I continued leading the development of solutions leveraging data to optimize pricing.  

  

In early 2010, the data landscape changed drastically with the growth of AWS cloud computing and big data. I joined start-up Oculus 360, building big data leveraging and natural language processing solutions.  

  

I joined Sabre’s operations research consulting practice in 2013 to lead a team of PhDs and developed a solution that joined big data and revenue management to optimize dynamic pricing. 

  

In 2015 I joined Brierley to manage and consult on advanced analytics before moving to the WPP family in 2020 where I am now the senior vice president of data science strategy and innovation. 

What stage has your organization reached on its data maturity journey?

Choreograph is the data and technology arm of WPP. Its data maturity is in the high end of the spectrum. It procures solutions anchored in data and powered by machine learning and AI. 

 

Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for

I manage a global agile team of A+ players. My team consists of data scientists, data engineers with creativity skill set and business intelligence developers. My team members are in California, Texas and France. I manage a relatively small team of eight individuals, however their outstanding productivity and value are highly appreciated by the company. I report to the chief innovation officer of Choreograph and Group M.

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your organization and on the industry as a whole? 

In the short term the challenges I see in the data world are of two-fold. Firstly, due to the new data privacy landscape, I think synthetic data production and cleanroom technologies will see an accelerated adoption and speedy growth rate. Secondly the AI in martech and adtech would also expand beyond the language models such ChatGPT4.

 

In the long term, and within the innovation spectrum, the landscapes will reach an inflection point when Quantum computing will expand to mainstream development. Quantum computing will allow AI practitioners and developers to use more data than they have ever used before. 

 

Have you set out a vision for data? If so, what is it aiming for and does it embrace the whole organization or just the data function?

Yes, I did. Data vision, in my opinion must embrace the whole organization. Adhering to the concept that the best way to predict the future is to create it. It will be strenuous for organizations to create a bright future without data as AI is expanding and needs massive amounts of data. 

 

My vision of data considers the data maturity of the organization: when the data maturity is high, it will consist of using the data to create intelligent solutions that truly power the businesses with new actionable clear insights and most importantly create a measurable value thus driven by ROI. When the data maturity is medium, then the organization would benefit from strengthening the data structure from a technology perspective to ease up its extraction and its availability to business users. Also putting data literacy programs with executive sponsors is quite a driver to move the organization to the next level. When data maturity is low, the organization would benefit from putting a solid budget and executive sponsors to harness data following best practices and ensure a good technology strategy and execution to ensure high quality data. Also having data evangelists across the organization is key. 

Assia Abada
Assia Abada
has been included in:
  • 100 Enablers 2022 (USA)
  • 100 Enablers 2023 (USA)

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