Karen Dewar is Chief Data and Analytics Officer at NatWest, where she sets and leads the bank’s data, analytics and AI agenda with a clear focus on improving customer outcomes.
Her career at NatWest spans more than 28 years and is best described in distinct chapters, each building towards her current role. Karen began on the frontline of retail banking, working in branches as a teller and customer adviser. This early experience, directly helping customers manage their finances, shaped a deep understanding of customer needs and remains the foundation of her leadership approach. She went on to manage teams delivering customer-facing services, reinforcing the importance of operational excellence and empathy. These formative roles not only anchored her commitment to customers, but also honed her ability to anticipate and respond to emerging requirements, enabling her to proactively identify evolving customer expectations and adapt strategies accordingly, ensuring NatWest stayed ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing landscape.
In the next phase of her career, Karen shifted focus to understanding the bank as an integrated system. She played key roles in large-scale transformations and group-wide reorganisations, gaining insights into how different parts of the organisation come together to serve personal, business and commercial customers.
A turning point came through her work on customer experience. Karen was part of the team that redesigned how frontline staff were rewarded, moving away from incentive-led models, and helped establish Net Promoter Score across NatWest. This exposure to large-scale customer experience data drew her into marketing, customer insights and, ultimately, analytics and decisioning.
From there, Karen progressed to lead embedded customer analytics teams before becoming Chief Data and Analytics Officer. Across every chapter of her career, a single thread has remained constant: a commitment to serving customers and using insight to deliver better experiences at scale.
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?
Karen framed effective data and AI leadership as a discipline grounded in listening, learning and team building rather than technical virtuosity alone. “First and foremost,” is “being able to listen and understand”, whether that insight comes directly from customers, from “people who serve our customers”, or from partners across the ecosystem.
For Karen, the role starts with clarity on “what are the problems that we’re trying to address”, combined with an outward-looking mindset that continually scans how others are tackling similar challenges. Closely linked to this is the ability to act as a translator: helping different expert groups understand one another so that “everybody at least has clarity and improve[s] their capability around what we’re able to deliver”.
Karen is explicit that progression has always been guided by two questions: “how does this help our customers?” and “what will I learn?” That mindset remains active today. She described upcoming study AI through Oxford University alongside her peers, driven by a desire to “never stop learning” and to stay ahead of emerging techniques so she can bring that knowledge back into the organisation.
Another key element of Karen’s philosophy is the importance of attracting and hiring the very best people. She emphasises that being recognised as a credible destination for exceptional talent is essential, not only for driving innovation but also for fostering an environment where ambitious individuals can thrive. By building a reputation for excellence and providing opportunities for growth, Karen ensures that her teams are made up of talented, energetic people who are motivated to help deliver meaningful impact.
The third skill is leadership through others. Karen is clear that impact comes from “surrounding yourself with an excellent, talented, ambitious, energetic team” and then fostering that environment so individuals can “grow and achieve their ambitions”.
Bringing it together, she summarises her approach simply: “listen, understand, communicate well”, commit to continuous learning, and build teams that are supported to thrive. For her, those human capabilities are what ultimately enable data and AI to deliver meaningful, sustained value.
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?
Karen advice is grounded in ambition, energy and enjoyment rather than caution. Her instinctive answer is simply: “be bold”. For Karen, boldness is not about bravado, but about the ability to “set a compelling vision”.
She stated that aiming high matters because “it excites people” and brings “fire, energy and a really committed problem-solving mindset” to the work. A bold ambition creates momentum, even when outcomes are uncertain. In her view, leaders are “better to aim high and miss than not stretch yourself”, because the act of stretching galvanises teams and sharpens focus, regardless of where the landing point ends up. That willingness to set direction is particularly important in data and AI, where ambiguity is constant and progress depends as much on belief as on capability.
Alongside boldness sits something more human: enjoyment. “It came down to either be bold or have fun,” she explains, because leadership at this level demands “a passion for what you do” and clarity on the impact it creates. Without that, ambition quickly becomes performative rather than motivating. In the end, she chose not to separate them; she would “roll them together and say, be bold and have fun”. The combination matters. Boldness without enjoyment can burn teams out; fun without ambition can drift. Together, they create the conditions for sustained leadership impact and a vision that stretches the organisation, delivered by someone who genuinely cares about the work and the people doing it.
For Karen, it’s the combination of skills and mindset that lifts leaders beyond technical ability, enabling them to set bold visions and drive meaningful change.