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  • Saba Beyene, Managing Director, Commercial Data and Customer Analytics and Data Science, American Airlines

Saba Beyene, Managing Director, Commercial Data and Customer Analytics and Data Science, American Airlines

Describe your career to date

I am a data and analytics executive with more than two decades of experience in leading high performing data science teams in Fortune 500 companies. I excel at building organizations and talent, and transforming culture and business, from the ground up. 

How are you developing the data literacy of your organization, including the skills of your data teams and of your business stakeholders? 

We are deploying frameworks and processes for data governance and data literacy specifically. My data teams are provided access to training materials that upskill them and keep them up to date on what is happening across the technology landscape. We use every opportunity to educate our stakeholders on critical data assets and which ones to use for what questions, consistent metric definitions, and more.  

We have created a data literacy program staffed with teams with expertise in the space and developing materials working with our data stewards and data quality teams, and our technology teams, producing a one-stop-shop of data marketplace to support the business. 

What role do you play in building and delivering conventional artificial intelligence solutions, including machine learning models? Are you also involved in your organization’s adoption of generative AI? 

My role involves identifying high value use cases for artificial intelligence (AI) models and working with our tech teams testing and deploying solutions and eventually playing a role in the adoption of those solutions. 

Have you been able to fix the data foundations of your organization, particularly with regard to data quality? 

Regarding data quality and foundations, we have invested in technology and human resources to address data quality issues at the core. We are building these capabilities and implementing the technology across our critical data assets and ultimately making our data ready for all types of AI (diagnostic, predictive, and generative). It is a great time to be in data science in our company. 

Saba Beyene
has been included in:
  • 100 Brands 2023 (USA)
  • 100 Brands 2024 (USA)

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