Steph Bell is Director of Analytics at Sainsbury’s, leading a multidisciplinary team of analysts, data scientists and visualisation specialists at the centre of one of the UK’s largest retail groups. Her remit spans Sainsbury’s, Argos, Habitat, and Tu, where analytics underpins decisions that shape the experience of millions of customers each day.
Steph began her career in analytics straight out of university, joining a consultancy focused on marketing and customer insight. The pace and breadth of agency life exposed her to multiple sectors, products and technical challenges, building both her analytical depth and commercial awareness. Crucially, it revealed the tangible value data can create when insight is translated into action, which has been a theme that has defined her career since.
Her move to Nectar, architect of the UK’s largest coalition loyalty programme, marked a shift closer to large-scale customer engagement. At Nectar360 she worked at the intersection of insight, media and commercial partnerships, helping brands and retailers better understand and influence customer behaviour. The role sharpened her expertise in loyalty analytics while balancing internally focused analysis with client-facing collaboration.
Now at Sainsbury’s, Steph operates at the heart of retail transformation. Her team supports core trading and operational decisions, ensuring analytics is embedded in day-to-day performance as well as longer-term strategy. Over the course of her career, she has seen the discipline evolve significantly, technologically and culturally, and continues to focus on how data can be harnessed responsibly and pragmatically to deliver meaningful, measurable impact.
Steph is a regular contributor to DataIQ events, having been a participant at numerous DataIQ events and an attendee to many more. She has also been listed in the DataIQ 100 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. Sainsbury’s won the 2024 DataIQ Awards – AI and Data for Good Hero Organisation Award under Steph’s stewardship.