Di Mayze is Chief Data and AI Officer at Marks & Spencer, where she leads the company’s data and AI agenda as the first person to hold the role.
Her career began in digital, building websites in the late 1990s, before she moved decisively into data in 2006. A formative chapter was her time at dunnhumby, working on Tesco Clubcard-related programmes. The culture of high trust in data, strong intellectual curiosity, minimal hierarchy, and a shared passion for insight shaped her view of what effective data-led organisations can look like and set the foundation for her career.
Di went on to join Boots as Head of Commercial Insight, an experience that exposed her to a very different organisational culture and sharpened her perspective on how leadership choices around data directly influence business outcomes, such as how much to invest, how widely to share it, and when to trust it over instinct.
She was headhunted by WPP, where she spent a decade in senior leadership roles. She initially ran a marketing technology consultancy acquired by the group, before becoming Global Head of Data and AI, responsible for data and AI strategy across one of the world’s largest marketing services organisations.
Di joined Marks & Spencer in 2024, attracted by the opportunity to shape data and AI at the heart of a major retail transformation. Across her career, she has consistently focused on building cultures that value insight, curiosity and evidence-based decision-making, and on translating data and AI into practical impact at scale.
Can you share a data and AI initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
Di Mayze described two key areas of pride. First, pragmatic initiatives where teams have focused on practical, genuinely useful solutions with new technologies. And second, developing teams themselves.
Her team are stepping back to ask what problems really need solving. Many use cases, she explained, are far more prosaic but no less valuable. For example, how can colleagues find what they need in the flow of their job, quicker? The result is development of solutions designed around clear operational needs. Accuracy and practicality have been non-negotiable, rather than chasing scale for its own sake. Di is particularly proud that this can be achieved in-house, both as a technical achievement and as a capability-building exercise.
The work sits squarely within her broader reskilling agenda, with a priority focus on developing people so they can grow into new technology areas. For Di, the significance of these initiatives lies in proving that valuable, reliable AI can be created without over-engineering, while simultaneously equipping teams with the skills needed to sustain and extend that work.
Reflecting on your career, what is one non-traditional piece of advice (outside of technical skills) you would give to an aspiring data or AI leader aiming for the C-suite?
Di’s advice is refreshingly human: embrace “mischief”. Reflecting on how she leads her own team, she described consciously wanting to be “a positive voice in your head”, encouraging people to “go and do stuff, be brave, experiment”.
For Di, progress with data & AI does not come from passive observation or polished slideware, but from deep, hands-on immersion. She urges early-career practitioners to “be a total practitioner”, to play with new models as soon as they are released, and to come back with a point of view on “which ones we should get stuck in with, and which ones are a bit rubbish”. That curiosity and willingness to experiment is how teams demystify fast-moving technology and separate substance from noise.
Di deliberately creates space for creativity and storytelling, even humour, because data & AI conversations can otherwise “very quickly” default to fear. She leans into playfulness as a leadership tool, describing teams experimental examples, not as gimmicks but as ways to make AI “creative and engaging and entertaining”. That sense of fun lowers barriers, draws people in and makes the technology less abstract.
Her message to those aiming for senior leadership is not to wait for permission or certainty, but to immerse themselves fully, build judgement through doing, and develop the confidence to speak up. It is, she argues, “such an exciting time, particularly for early careers”, and the worst mistake would be to stand on the sidelines. As Di puts it simply: “get on the bus.”