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Elizabeth Shepherd, GM Data Science and AI, Microsoft

Elizabeth Shepherd, GM Data Science and AI, Microsoft

What has been your path to power?

From the UK (University of Plymouth BIMS) to the USA via London! I am a UK citizen, having spent most of my career there. I worked at a start-up which owned the patent for behavioral-based cookie tracking, did a period in contracting (didn’t enjoy it so much!) and doing web analytics implementations to Expedia where I got to travel the world, run global teams and establish several analytics practices in the B2C group and B2B group.

From there, I found my way to the USA in 2016 where I worked to transform the core Expedia Group data platform and services engineering function from a data centre-based capability to a modern cloud-based flexible infrastructure.

I am currently at Microsoft where I am able to combine all my past experiences and learnings into one role, where I manage the marketing analytics data platform as well as the analytics and data science practice for the global demand centre which is focused on the B2B marketing experiences for Azure, Dynamics and M365.

What are your key areas of focus for data and analytics in 2022?

More analytics, faster! Seriously, a key focus for us continues to be enabling our data scientist, analysts and business partners to be able to understand and innovate using data to provide the best experience for our customers. The data is available but, like many organizations, disparate across the business.

Our focus for 2022 is to continue to bring it together to build better transparency and provide understanding of impact of our marketing efforts on the Microsoft business.To do this we are prioritizing analytics tooling and data technologies to enable finding and understand data faster and investing across the whole team by creating training and opportunities for business and analysts to collaborate.

Tell us what leadership means to you in the context of your role as a senior data leader.

As a leader, my job is to build a high performing team by enabling and supporting my team to be the best partners they can with the business so that we can work together effectively. It can be a challenge for the business and the “data people” to be on the same page as personalities, approaches and organizational barriers can get in the way. My role as a data leader is to help both sides come together by modeling and coaching how to collaborate on the best outcome for the business.

To do this, I prioritize spending time with my business colleagues to understand the priorities and opportunities and with our analysts and data scientists to understand barriers to supporting the team. From there, my role is to build and execute a plan to deliver value to the business, sharing wins and learnings as we go. This helps build a sense of team and trust which is crucial in high performing teams.

And what about the skills of your data teams and of your business stakeholders? How are you developing data literacy across the company/organization?

Yes! We work on helping our partners with data literacy through practical formal and informal ways, through peer coaching and partnership as we build presentations and insights together, lunch and learns, demo days and providing budget and time to self-learn. We also invest the same on the other side to ensure the analysts increase their business literacy through lunch and learns, attendance at business reviews and access to business focused courses.

Elizabeth Shepherd
has been included in:

100 Enablers 2022 (USA)

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