Frédéric Bernard-Payen is a Data Governance Senior Expert at Airbus, where he focuses on building the trusted data foundations required to scale advanced analytics and AI in a highly complex industrial environment.
He brings more than 22 years of experience across consulting and industry, including a decade in consulting and 12 years at Airbus. Early in his career, Frédéric observed that many digital transformations failed not because of technology limitations, but because data was treated as a byproduct rather than a product. That insight marked a shift in his perspective from “building technology” to “engineering trust”.
At Airbus, he encountered an environment where data was often openly accessible but lacked the industrial-grade quality and reliability needed for meaningful analytics and decision-making. A defining realisation was that sharing data alone was insufficient to drive value; users needed confidence in its quality before they could take operational or strategic risks.
This led Frédéric to define and drive the “Data Product 2.0” framework, moving the organisation from a compliance-led mindset to a product-centric approach to data. Central to this was the creation of a “Trustworthy” standard, which now underpins more than 100 data products across the business.
To deliver this change at scale, Frédéric founded a federated network bringing together data officers, legal, and cyber security experts. This experience reinforced his belief that effective leadership in data governance is not about centralised control, but about creating a shared language of accountability, quality and service levels that aligns diverse stakeholders.
As a data and AI leader, which traits and skills do you think matter most, and which of those have been most influential for you in your current position?
“The most critical skill for a modern data leader is multilingual influence: the ability to speak the distinct languages of business value, IT architecture, and legal risk simultaneously.
“In an engineering-driven organisation like Airbus, technical authority alone is not enough. The trait that has been most influential for me is diplomatic resilience. When I launched the data product network, I wasn’t managing a team I hired; I was federating peers who had conflicting priorities. The CISO wanted security, the lawyer wanted compliance, and the program manager wanted speed. My success came from not forcing my own language on them but translating their needs into a shared framework. I had to demonstrate to the lawyer that better metadata meant less risk, and to the business that stricter governance meant faster access.
“This ability to build bridges and to show that governance is an enabler of speed is what allowed us to break down silos. A data leader today cannot just be a technical architect; they must be the diplomat who negotiates the peace treaty between innovation and control.”
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?
“Don’t try to own the data; own the standard. Many aspiring leaders fall into the trap of empire-building, trying to centralise all data teams and assets under their direct control. In a large, complex enterprise, this always fails because you become the bottleneck.
“Instead, my advice is to build a federation. Focus your energy on defining the ‘rules of the road’ or the standards for quality, interoperability, and ethics, and then empower the business domains to drive their own vehicles.
“By giving up operational control, you gain strategic influence. You move from being the person who says ‘no’ to the person who makes the entire ecosystem work. In the C-suite, your value isn’t measured by headcount, but by the velocity at which the rest of the company can innovate using the foundations you laid.”