Balancing theory and engineering constraints

Tara Raafat At Bloomberg, Tara Raafat applies her extensive ontology, knowledge graph, and management expertise to create a solid semantic and technical foundation for the enterprise's mission-critical data, information, and knowledge. One of the keys to the success of her knowledge graph projects is her focus on people. She of course employs the best semantic practices and embraces the latest technology, but her knack for engaging the right stakeholders and building the right kinds of teams is arguably what distinguishes her work. We talked about: her history as a knowledge practitioner and metadata strategist the serendipitous intersection of her knowledge work with the needs of new AI systems her view of a knowledge graph as the DNA of enterprise information, a blueprint for systems that manage the growth and evolution of your enterprise's knowledge the importance of human contributions to LLM-augmented ontology and knowledge graph building the people you need to engage to get a knowledge graph project off the ground: executive sponsors, skeptics, enthusiasts, and change-tolerant pioneers the five stars you need on your team to build a successful knowledge graph: ontologists, business people, subject matter experts, engineers, and a KG product owner the importance of balancing the desire for perfect solutions with the pragmatic and practical concerns that ensure business success a productive approach to integrating AI and other tech into your professional work the importance of viewing your knowledge graph as not just another database, but as the very foundation of your enterprise knowledge Tara's bio Dr. Tara Raafat is Head of Metadata and Knowledge Graph Strategy in Bloomberg’s CTO Office, where she leads the development of Bloomberg’s enterprise Knowledge Graph and semantic metadata strategy, aligning it with AI and data integration initiatives to advance next-generation financial intelligence. With over 15 years of expertise in semantic technologies, she has designed knowledge-driven solutions across multiples domains including but not limited to finance, healthcare, industrial symbiosis, and insurance. Before Bloomberg, Tara was Chief Ontologist at Mphasis and co-founded NextAngles™, an AI/semantic platform for regulatory compliance. Tara holds a PhD in Information System Engineering from the UK. She is a strong advocate for humanitarian tech and women in STEM and a frequent speaker at international conferences, where she delivers keynotes, workshops, and tutorials. Connect with Tara online LinkedIn email: traafat at bloomberg dot net Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/yw4yWjeixZw Podcast intro transcript This is the Knowledge Graph Insights podcast, episode number 41. As groundbreaking new AI capabilities appear on an almost daily basis, it's tempting to focus on the technology. But advanced AI leaders like Tara Raafat focus as much, if not more, on the human side of the knowledge graph equation. As she guides metadata and knowledge graph strategy at Bloomberg, Tara continues her career-long focus on building the star-shaped teams of humans who design and construct a solid foundation for your enterprise knowledge. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 41 of the Knowledge Graph Insights podcast. I am really excited today to welcome to the show Tara Raafat. She's the head of metadata and knowledge graph strategy at Bloomberg, and a very accomplished ontologist, knowledge graph practitioner. And welcome to the show, Tara. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're doing these days. Tara: Hi, thank you so much, Larry. I'm super-excited to be here and chatting with you. We always have amazing chats, so I'm looking forward to this one as well. Well, as Larry mentioned, I'm currently working for Bloomberg and I've been in the space of knowledge graphs and ontology and creation for a pretty long time. So I've been in this community, I've seen a lot. And my interest has always been in the application of ontologies and knowledge graphs in industries, and have worked in so many different industries from banking and financial to insurance to medical. So I touched upon a lot of different domains with the application of knowledge graphs. And currently at Bloomberg, I am also leading their metadata strategy and the knowledge graph strategy, so basically semantic metadata. And we're looking over how we are basically connecting all the different data sources and data silos that we have within Bloomberg to make our data ready for all the AI interesting, exciting AI stuff that we're doing. And making sure that we have a great representation of our data. Larry: That's something that comes up all the time in my conversations lately is that people have done this work for years for very good reasons, all those things you just talked about, the importance of this kind of work in finance and insurance and medical fields and things like that. But it turns out that it makes you AI-ready as well. So is that just a happy coincidence or are you doing even more to make your metadata more AI-ready these days? Tara: Yeah. In a sense, you could say happy coincidence, but I think from the very beginning of when you think about ontologies and knowledge graphs, the goal was always to make your data machine-understandable. So whenever people ask me, "You're an ontologist, what does that even mean?" My explanation was always, I take all the information in your head and put it in a way that is machine understandable. So now encoded in that way. So now when we're thinking about the AI era, it's basically we're thinking if AI is operating on our information, on our data, it needs to have the right context and the right knowledge. So it becomes a perfect fit here. So if data is available and ready in your knowledge graph format, it means that it's machine understandable. It has the right context. It has the extra information that an AI system, specifically in the LLM era and generative AI needs in order to make sure that the answering that it's done is more grounded and based in facts, or have a better provenance. And it's more accurate in quality. Larry: Yeah, that's right. You just reminded me, it's not so much serendipity or a happy coincidence. It's like, no, it's just what we do. Because we make things accessible. The whole beauty of this is the- Tara: We knew what's coming, right? The word AI has changed so much. It's the same thing. It just keeps popping up in different contexts, but yeah. Larry: So you're actually a visionary futurist as all of us are in the product. Yeah. In your long experience, one of the things I love most, there's a lot of things I love about your work. I even wrote about it after KGC. I summarized one of your talks, and I think it's on your LinkedIn profile now, you have this great definition of a knowledge graph. And you liken it to a biological concept that I like. So can you talk a little bit about that? Tara: Sure. I see knowledge graph as the DNA of data or DNA of our information. And the reason I started thinking about it that way is when you think about the human DNA, you're literally thinking of the structure and relationship of the organisms and how they operate and how they evolve. So there's a blueprint of their operation and how they would grow and evolve. And for me, that's very similar to when we start creating a knowledge graph representation of our data, because we're again, capturing the structure and relationships between our data. And we're actually encoding the context and the rules that are needed to allow our data to grow and evolve as our business grows and evolves. So there's a very similarity for me there. And it also brings that human touch to this whole concept of knowledge graphs because when I think about knowledge graphs and talking about ontologies, it comes from a philosophical background. And it's a lot more social and human. Tara: And at the end of the day, the foundation of it is how we as humans interpret the world and interpret information. And how then by the use of technology, we encode it, but the interpretation is still very human. So that's why this link for me is actually very interesting. And I think one more thing I would add, which is I do this comparison to also emphasize on the fact that knowledge graphs are not just another database or another data store. So I don't like companies to look at it from that perspective. They really should look at it as the foundation on which their data grows and evolves as their business grows. Larry: Yeah. And that foundational role, it just keeps coming up, again, related to AI a lot, the LLM stuff that I've heard a lot of people talk about the factual foundation for your AI infrastructure and that kind of thing. And again, another one of those things like, yeah, it just happens to be really good at that. And it was purpose built for that from the start. Larry: You mentioned a lot in there, the human element. And that's what I was so enamored of with your talk at KGC and other talks you've done and we've talked about this. And one of the things that, just a quick personal aside, one of the things that drives me nuts about the current AI hype cycle is this idea like, "Oh, we can just get rid of humans. It's great. We'll just have machines instead." I'm like, "Have you not heard..." Every conversation, I've done about 300 different interviews over the years. Every single one of them talks about how it's not technical, it's not procedural or management wisdom. It's always people stuff. It's like change management and working with people. Can you talk about how the people stuff manifests in your work in metadata strategy and knowledge graph construction? I know that's a lot. Tara: Sure.