Kevin Tubb is Chief Data and Analytics Officer at The AA, with more than 25 years’ experience using data to drive commercial performance across a wide range of roles. His career has spanned product performance analysis, channel trading, customer personalisation and, most recently, leading large-scale insurance pricing teams. Throughout this journey, Kevin has worked with data that was rarely perfect, but he has consistently believed in its critical importance and untapped potential for brands.
Kevin joined The AA with a clear view of both the opportunity and the gaps in how data was being used. When asked to lead the data team, he embraced the role as an opportunity to deepen his expertise in data management while applying a broad commercial perspective to defining high-impact use cases across insight, visualisation, and predictive analytics.
A defining feature of Kevin’s leadership style is his belief that it is not the role of a leader to be the expert in everything, but to unlock the expertise of others. He has worked alongside specialists across many disciplines and sees his responsibility as creating the conditions where their talent can thrive, while continuing to learn himself.
Kevin also strongly believes that most people come to work wanting to do a good job. His experience has shown that when people feel valued, supported and psychologically safe, they rise to significant challenges. This belief has underpinned his approach to rebuilding teams, negotiating multi-million-pound contracts and taking bold commercial decisions, shaping a data function focused on trust, empowerment, and long-term impact.
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?
“Data is often difficult to grasp for some areas of the organisation. Being a translator and storyteller on the ‘art of the possible’ between technical and non-technical, exec and wider colleagues, is one of the key things that achieves credibility and buy in. This was key in securing investment to consolidate our data assets into a modern infrastructure, and bringing the wider organisation on the journey.
“Increasingly, there is a ‘growth mindset’ as data and AI capability is rapidly evolving, and in some cases, I think the data tooling and platform sector has been guilty of reinvention that serves to confuse and sell consultancy. A commitment to continuous learning is perhaps one of the most important aspects of success. In a world internally where our lakehouse is rolling out that (for example) puts building agents in the hands of many, that’s key.
“In other respects, the role requires much of the experiences I’d built as a broader leader, starting with clarity of what needs achieving and how that adds value to stakeholders. Then it’s about communicating down and outwards in the right way for each audience, building an operating model to deliver, and filling it with the best people you can find. This is consistent with every role I’ve done. Much of my current leadership team is new, as is our ways of working within and outside the team.”
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?
“You are a leader first and a data and AI leader second. By this I mean be a technical expert, but ultimately the executive doesn’t care for your latest neural network model or what table types you use in the data lakehouse.
“Do what you can to expose yourself to what executive leaders care about, like new product and revenue ideas, ways to make things cheaper and faster, and building and engaging teams with a winning culture. When you arrive at the C-suite you’ll need to have much more in common with other functional leaders than your counterparts from when you first started your career.
“Sometimes a ‘squiggly’ career can get you ahead, so be brave enough to build broad perspectives, network across the organisation and outside. And enjoy yourself!”
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