The Alldus Podcast - AI in Action

Today's guest is Puneet Gangrade, Data Science Team Lead at MightyHive in New York. Founded in 2012, MightyHive is the leading data and digital media consultancy that helps marketers take control. MightyHive delivers sustained results from the ground up through advisory for business transformation, privacy-first data strategy and digital media services. MightyHive is trusted by brands like Autodesk, Bayer, Electrolux, Renault, Sony, Sprint, TransUnion and US Bank to name a few. Puneet manages and implements clients' global portfolios for their complete digital transformation. His responsibilities include building end-to-end data warehousing systems in different cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure), using the privacy-safe platform (Google Ads Data Hub) for KPI-driven analysis, utilizing the advertising, on-site analytics, and other data to look beyond the numbers, and bringing machine learning into action for all his clients. In today's episode, Puneet tells us about: Helping companies build an effective digital transformation strategy, Challenges the Data Science team are solving in industry, The importance of working effectively with stakeholders, How new data privacy laws will impact their offerings to customers, What he enjoys most about working at MightyHive & Exciting opportunities within the team

Today's guest is Shawn Ramirez, Head of Data Science at Shelf Engine in Seattle. Shawn is an accomplished data science leader and SME in causal inference, experimentation, Machine Learning, statistics, optimization and game theory. She drives AI product development building, testing, and leveraging statistical and cutting edge machine learning at scale on high impact problems. Shawn's passion is working on complex questions about behavior, users and customers. Founded in 2015, Shelf Engine uses machine learning to help grocery stores dial in their orders to minimize waste and maximize profits.  Shawn joined the company in late 2020 and leads a high-performing team in data science, machine learning, research, ML Ops, causal inference and experimentation. Shawn and her team are working on forecasting and price optimization to solve the $160B food waste problem, lower prices and feed America. In today's episode, Shawn tells us about: Shelf Engine’s work within grocery forecasting, Problems they are solving within food waste and hunger, How they are applying Machine Learning to solve these problems, What she looks for when hiring into the team, Advice on how to become a leader within Data Science and Why she loves working at Shelf Engine

Today's guest is Richard Ross, Director of Emerging Technology at ICF. Richard is a technology executive with a demonstrated history of leading and implementing complex initiatives across the public and private sectors, setting a strategic vision and executing comprehensive digital & business transformation strategies and IT plans. His expertise includes aligning technology and organizational strategy, guiding large-scale transformative initiatives from concept to completion with an executive presence, program management and people development. As the Director of Technology at ICF International, he provides advisory, IT, strategy and other implementation services to Public Sector businesses. He serves as a trusted advisor to organizational leaders with a proven track record of helping them discover new ways to deliver value through the creative use of information technology. Richard understands the importance of people, change, culture, technology and the power of data to capture the value promised by digital transformations and IT modernization efforts. In the episode, Richard will tell you about: The interesting work he does with ICF, What he’s learned from his fascinating career to date, Digital Transformation trends in the public & healthcare sectors, Challenges to be aware of on your digital transformation journey, Emerging technologies we should embrace, Use cases of the benefits ICF bring to clients & Advice he would offer to his younger self

Today's guest is Kolja Dobrindt, VP and Global Head of Analytics at Lidl International in Germany. Kolja is responsible for the end-to-end analytics capability of a $100 billion+, 11,000 store, 32 country organization, ranging from decentralized self-service capabilities to large-scale, operational data products. Lidl are on a mission to build an operational analytics capability from vision and strategy, from hiring the right talent of experts and leaders to defining the organizational and technical framework to deliver data-driven solutions. Kolja has gained broad exposure to the IT and retail industries as well as digital transformation, strategy and project, and program management. He works hand-in-hand with the board and senior executives at Lidl to build a project portfolio of over 20 initiatives with millions in realized benefits already delivered to date. He is also collaborating across business functions and IT to establish a common vision and roadmap to develop broad organizational data and analytics capabilities beyond the core team. In the episode, Kolja will discuss: Interesting projects the Analytics team are working on at Lidl, The key to understanding the problem you are solving, Challenges they need to overcome to achieve success, How the pandemic has changed customer behaviour in retail, The success of their Loyalty app,  Upcoming projects and what the future has in store

Today's guest is Emily Bailey, Director of Data Products & Machine Learning at Rent the Runway in New York. Founded in 2009, Rent the Runway is transforming the way modern women get dressed by pioneering dynamic ownership and enabling women to rent, subscribe to and purchase secondhand clothing. They have been named on CNBC’s “Disruptor 50” five times in ten years and have placed on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list multiple times. Rent the Runway is disrupting the $2.4 trillion fashion industry through their in-house proprietary technology and a one-of-a-kind reverse logistics operation. Emily leads a team of talented data scientists and machine learning engineers who work on problems that span all areas of the business and many technical domains, such as recommender systems & personalization, dynamic pricing, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing and operations research. In today's episode, Emily tells us about: The impact Rent the Runway are making in the retail industry, How the pandemic has impacted the business, Leading and building a successful data science team, What they look for when hiring into the team & Interesting projects they are working on at Rent the Runway

Today's guest is Emily Capodilupo, VP of Data Science and Research at WHOOP in Boston. Founded in 2012, WHOOP are on a mission to unlock human performance. They believe that every individual has an inner potential that can be enhanced through continuous monitoring. As such, they have built a system across hardware, software and analytics designed to collect and analyze the most important data on the human body. Today, WHOOP is fortunate to monitor professional athletes, the military, aspirational fitness enthusiasts, Fortune 500 CEOs, executives, doctors, construction workers and more. In today's episode, Emily discusses: The interesting work she does at WHOOP, How Data Science has evolved within the organization, The day-to-day life of the data team, Success stories of the impact WHOOP are making in the industry, and Building and scaling a successful data team

Today's guest is Tameem Hourani, Principal at RapDev in Boston. Founded in 2017, RapDev helps customers of all sizes transform into true DevOps organizations. They have taken several customers from deploying applications once a month to hundreds of times a day. Over the past few years, they have taken customers on journeys ranging from Tool integrations to Culture and Organizational changes. RapDev is a team of experienced ServiceNow Wizards and passionate SRE's contributing to the open-source community, who have built multiple enterprise-scale CI/CD pipelines and integrations to help your organization build velocity in your release cycle. They specialize in helping organizations go through a full transformation of their Development and engineering teams, allowing them to integrate their operations with their development teams. In the episode, Tameem will tell you about: Highlights and learns of his career to date, The work they do at RapDev, Five core values they follow within their organization, How they are making developers lives easier, Advice on how to build a successful implementation & Use cases of the benefits they bring to customers

Today's guest is Yohann Smadja, VP of Data Science at Cedar in New York. Founded in 2016, Cedar provides a smarter way for hospitals, health systems and medical groups to manage the patient payment ecosystem. Their platform delivers modern intelligence to alleviate collections challenges, dramatically improve billing operations and ensure a personalized billing experience for patients. Together with the leading medical groups and hospitals across the country, Cedar is elevating the patient payment experience. With 12 years of experience in the field, Yohann leads the Data Science team who is in charge of making sense of the vast amount of data they have available to help achieve the company’s vision. They build analytics for healthcare providers and their teams to inform the product development process. They tell stories about all aspects of the patient journey and analyze patient behavior, as well as build ML models to drive better decision-making at scale on the platform. In today's episode, Yohann discusses: How they are impacting the patient experience, Interesting projects the data science team are working on, Milestones on his journey with Cedar to date, Challenges the team needs to overcome to achieve success, What excites him for the future & What he looks for when hiring into the team

Today's guest is Arijit Saha, SVP & Head of Engineering at Noodle.ai in San Francisco. Founded in 2016, Noodle.ai is your source for Enterprise AI business applications. They are on a mission to create a world without waste in Manufacturing & Supply Chain with their Vulcan & Athena product suites bringing radical efficiency and extraordinary good. They are building a new category of software products in the Enterprise stack that helps solve the complex challenges associated with Supply Chain and Manufacturing Operations. They define this fog within the operations as Operational Entropy and use the advancement in AI/ML & data processing workflows to build state-of-the-art software products to get rid of this entropy. In today's episode, Arijit discusses: The interesting work he does at Noodle.ai, Problems they are solving within reducing waste in supply chain & manufacturing, Use cases of how they are applying AI and Machine Learning, How the Data & tech team is structured for success,and What excites him for the future at Noodle.ai

Today's guest is Mark Goudzwaard, Director & Global Enterprise Platform Architect at National Grid in Massachusetts. National Grid is one of the world's largest utilities, focused on delivering energy safely, efficiently, reliably and responsibly. They play a vital role in delivering gas and electricity to many millions of people across Great Britain and Northeastern US in an efficient, reliable and safe manner. They are committed to safeguarding our global environment for future generations and providing all our customers with the highest standards of service. In the episode, Mark will tell you about: The interesting work he does at National Grid, Trends he is seeing within ServiceNow in retail and utilities sector, Skills needed to become a great architect, Stakeholder Engagement Best Practices and Advice he would offer to his younger self