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Roberta Hyland, Chief Data Officer, National Student Clearinghouse

Roberta Hyland, Chief Data Officer, National Student Clearinghouse

What has been your path to power?

I’d prefer to answer this question as the path to increased impact, because that is what is important to me. My path to chief data officer and other executive roles has been accomplished through learning Clearinghouse’s business, learning all of the complex aspects of the broadly defined education industry and its data, learning the evolution of applicable technologies and their value, and always being intellectually curious and focused on moving through issues to solutions.

This approach has enabled me to move between strategic and tactical and also build that skill in the people with whom I work closely. Lastly, the world is always changing and so I am always looking to understand what may be on the horizon and to understand the opportunities that those changes could bring.

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

My key areas of focus are:

1) completing the major components of a data modernization effort;

2) ensuring that we have appropriate data governance and data literacy programming to enable product teams to be successful leveraging the modernized data infrastructure; and

3) beginning to build the data science organization.

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

As a chief data officer, leadership means demonstrating the passion, creative thinking and intellectual curiosity about data and technology that will enable continuous growth, innovation and the betterment of products and possibly the world. I use every interaction as an opportunity to demonstrate these characteristics and then look for ways to coach people in the thought processes of these attributes and how to get to action.

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

The connection between data literacy and effective data governance is a key piece of my data strategy. When you make the organizational decision that data is an enterprise asset, you need to help everyone understand what that means and what will change in processes and interactions. So we focused initially on gaining buy-in and alignment at the executive level and then focused on our internal advocates and subject matter experts.

We then invested in training and practice with a key member of the chief data office (CDO) who would own data governance and data literacy programming. Next, we focused on evaluating and updating the job descriptions for key roles with data literacy skills. Lastly, we have developed a portfolio of training, informal literacy education (CDO word/phrase of the week), lunch and learns, and presentations that focus on the journey of pieces of data as they move through different processes and data systems.

Roberta Hyland
has been included in:

100 Brands 2022 (USA)

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