While securing the support of senior executives is a major hurdle of implementing a data transformation program, it’s often one of the earliest and easiest hurdles to overcome in comparison to the overall program itself. Leading a data transformation program requires thorough planning, organization-wide collaboration, careful execution, robust testing, and so much more. Vanessa Gonzalez is the Senior Director of Data and Analytics for ML & AI at Transamerica. Vanessa has experience in data transformation, leadership, and strategic direction for Data Science and Data Governance teams, and is an experienced senior data manager. Vanessa joins the show to share how she is helping to lead Transamerica’s Data Transformation program. In this episode, we discuss the biggest challenges Transamerica has faced throughout the process, the most important factors to making any large-scale transformation successful, how to collaborate with other departments, how Vanessa structures her team, the key skills data scientists need to be successful, and much more. Check out this month’s events: https://www.datacamp.com/data-driven-organizations-2022