Sushma Punuru is Executive Vice President and Chief Data Officer at Global Payments, where she leads the company’s data and AI strategy with a focus on business outcomes, growth, and customer impact.
Her path to data leadership has been unconventional. Trained as a chemical engineer, Sushma transitioned into software engineering, spending more than a decade architecting and building platforms where data engineering, analytics, and automation were embedded into the core of how systems operated.
Her first deep immersion into large-scale data transformation came with the design and delivery of a data lake for MetLife’s US Group business, modernizing call center operations and revealing how data could reshape customer experience at scale. A defining inflection point followed when Sushma took on responsibility for transformation within a $3 billion disability business. In that role, she shifted from being a provider of data to a consumer of it, using AI to overhaul claims processing. The result was a 98% increase in sales within a single year.
That experience fundamentally reshaped her leadership philosophy, reinforcing how data and AI can act as force multipliers for revenue, efficiency, and growth when tightly aligned to business needs.
Today, at Global Payments, Sushma evaluates every initiative through an outcomes-first lens. Her leadership emphasizes translating data and AI investments into measurable commercial impact, ensuring technology serves as a catalyst for transformation.
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?
“Bilingualism and empathy. Technical brilliance is table stakes. The real differentiator is bilingualism, the ability to translate data science models into language about customer retention and margin expansion. In my role, that means moving seamlessly between engineers building the Lakehouse and executives focused on quarterly earnings.
“Empathy is just as crucial, especially through massive change. I have led teams through mergers and shakeups, where the real battle isn’t tech stacks but cultures. You spot the human fear hiding behind every technical blocker. If you can’t read the room, you can’t drive transformation.”
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?
“Join a non-profit board. It sounds off the usual career script, but it changed how I lead. It taught me more about stakeholders, tradeoffs, and impact than any leadership course ever did. In a company, you have a title and budget. In a non-profit, you often have neither. You learn to move people with purpose, not position. You learn to solve real problems with almost no resources. It keeps you grounded while reminding you that impact is human. That mindset is what truly prepares you for the C-suite.”