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Yvonne Li, Vice President of Enterprise AI, Data, and Decision Science, Advance Auto Parts

Describe your career to date

I am an innovative, award-winning executive in the field of data science and artificial intelligence (AI), leveraging my social and behavioral science background to build high-performing teams and drive business results across various industries in Fortune 500 companies. With close to 20 years of experience in data science, machine learning, and AI, I possess a unique ability to drive impactful transformation at an enterprise level. Prior to joining Advance Auto Parts, I served as Executive Director of Data Science, AI, and Systems at IBM. I have been recognized for my strategic forward-thinking vision, combining it with rigorous data analysis and AI techniques to achieve strategic goals, optimize performance, and maximize return on investment. 

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

In my past and current roles, I have approached data literacy from different angles: 

  1. Identify the allies in the business who have an affinity to data to embed data literary across the functions. This includes training programs to train the trainers to enable allies to train their respective teams.  

  1. Host knowledge sharing and lunch and learn sessions to foster a community for data enthusiasts and business allies. Highlight wins, success, and business impact associated with the data literacy initiative. 

  1. Scale an education and training program to a broader audience, included as part of onboarding training for specific roles. 

  1. Develop self-service analytics portals that are user-friendly with how to demos to further drive adoption company wide. 

  1. Create a leader board to track and measure progress of each business function on data literacy. 

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

I specialize in the offense side of data and AI by extracting values out of data and AI to drive growth and revenue at scale and with speed. In previous roles, I developed AI solutions that successfully delivered conversion lift and revenue impact.  

With my role at Advance Auto, I evangelize the end-to-end retail pipeline through data and AI to drive growth and operational efficiency. This includes a brand-new demand forecast that captures the changing demand of today’s volatile market and innovation via generative AI to enhance customer experience and identify new sources of revenue. 

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

My approach to AI adoption and change management starts with identifying and understanding the organizational motivation and resistance to AI. I spend a significant amount of time with cross-functional partners to understand the business pain points and priorities. This provides me and my team with a different perspective to AI and how to approach it with the rest of the organization to drive change. A benefit is that this also stimulates innovations that may not be oof otherwise.  

My team and I stay very close to business to ensure the solution we create resonate and deliver as promised and to respond swiftly and effectively to feedback and results. This builds trust in the organization and transforms a transactional relationship into a partnership where the business is co-creating the solution with her team. Following this, I ensure to follow up with a series of quick wins demonstrating values and results with speed. This builds momentum and anticipation on what will be next, which ultimately transforms into a multi-year plan to round up the entire AI strategy.

Yvonne Li
has been included in:
  • 100 Brands 2024 (USA)
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