The Future Role of the CDO: Value, Risk and Governance in the Age of AI - CDO Panel

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Overview

In this opening panel at the CDO Inspired Summit, moderator Nick Creagh is joined by Marco Oliver, Co-founder and CEO at Configur; Tiffany Qiao, Global Lead Data Engineer at Pandora Jewellery; and Alex Sidgreaves, Chief Data Officer at Zurich Insurance.

The panel sets out to unpack the slogans boards love, such as data-driven, data literate and AI-powered, and to look at where the real work happens. They discuss strategy, ethics, governance and the messy business of making decisions as AI reshapes what organisations expect from their data executives.

Key takeaways

  • Boards buy into slogans like 'data-driven' and 'AI-powered', so data leaders need to translate them into clear strategy and decisions.
  • AI's impact on the workforce goes beyond entry-level roles; people mid-career, roughly aged 40 to 55, may struggle most with the change.
  • Ethics depends on design: a tool that compares people against their own past performance, rather than a generic baseline, removes a major source of bias.
  • Truly agentic AI means autonomous digital workers making decisions; there will still be human oversight, but not a human in every loop.
  • Link data strategy to business strategy, typically on a three-year cycle, and combine visible senior leadership with bottom-up engagement.

Watch the full session on YouTube: The Future Role of the CDO: Value, Risk & Governance in the Age of AI - CDO Panel

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