Driven by Data: The Podcast

In Episode 31 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Barry Panayi, Chief Data Officer at Howden, Sarah Barr Miller, Chief Data Officer at British Airways, Sid Shah, VP Data, International at Live Nation Entertainment, and Nina Bryant, Data, Analytics & AI Partner at Baringa, recorded live at Driven by Data LIVE 2026, where they discuss how data leaders balance foundational work with transformation, and why foundations only get funded when they are tied to a clear business outcome.

The panel covers how to prioritise foundations, how to deliver them through the use cases...

In this week's Data Debrief, Catherine Dowden-King & Kyle Winterbottom have a special Halloween episode! They discuss the tricks of the market, the horror stories that persist and the zombie challenges that won't seem to stay gone!

In Episode 30 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Catherine Dowden-King is joined by Di Mayze, Chief Data and AI Officer at Marks & Spencer, where they discuss why the CDO role has to prove its value, why clean data foundations still come before AI, and how to build a data culture people want to be part of.

As featured in Driven by Data Magazine 2026.

As the first person in post at M&S, and previously the first global head of data and AI at WPP, Di shares what she learned at dunnhumby, Boots and...

Welcome to another episode of Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, hosted by Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom.

This week, Catherine reports back from the Marketing Showcase in Bristol, her first event as a pure attendee in a long time. The talk was all data, analytics and AI. She and Kyle explore why marketing and data share the same struggle to show their impact. They also cover how B2B brands can stand out: know exactly who you’re speaking to, be authentic, and don’t jump on every bandwagon.

They...

In Episode 29 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Lee Fulmer, Head of Data at Canada Life Reinsurance, where they discuss why clean, well-governed data still isn’t AI-ready, and why context, a clear business outcome and curation matter more than any blueprint.

Canada Life Reinsurance reported around a billion dollars in profit last year from roughly fifty deals, with a workforce of around 400 people in which almost everyone is an actuary. Lee reports to the CEO as the first non-actuary the business has hired, which makes it a high-stakes setting fo...

In Episode 28 of Season 7 of Data Debrief, Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom look back on a packed Driven by Data Live and the lessons from its roundtables. They then turn to what a reported attack on a Russian data centre might mean for data leaders, and debrief their conversation with German Faraoni, Global Director of Shared Services at Reckitt, on why data teams need to be in the right room.

In this episode:

In Episode 28 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by German Faraoni, Global Director of Shared Services for Data at Reckitt, where they discuss why data and AI investment still struggles to show measurable value, and why the answer lies in articulating it in business outcomes rather than data terms.

German also shares how Reckitt cut the time to get a new SKU onto shelves by almost half, and how data leaders can earn their place in the right business conversations.

They also discuss:

In this episode of the Data Debrief, Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom reflect on the week's news and the latest Driven by Data: The Podcast interview, with Tom Sadler of HP. Their central question is whether organisations are measuring AI activity (headcount, spend, job titles, tooling) instead of the productivity and financial outcomes that matter.

They begin with the ASOS breach and the questions it raises about vendor risk. They then work through the latest Evident AI Index and what it rewards, before turning to Tom's candid views on hardware, cost and culture.

They also...

In Episode 27 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Tom Sadler, Data Science and AI Business Solution Lead at HP, where they discuss why most AI and data strategies stall not because of the technology, but because different teams and divisions inside the same organisation simply don't talk to each other.

They also explore why the best AI use cases are often built by accident, by employees solving their own problems rather than having a solution handed down from the top; how HP's compact AI workstations are bringing serious compute to...

Catherine and Kyle are deep in event-season chaos this week — the printed Driven by Data magazine has just gone to print, the digital edition is about to launch, and Driven by Data Live is just eight days away. Catherine recaps her (very delayed) trip to Big Data London: reconnecting with the community, a noticeably different vendor landscape stacked with new AI-era players, and "context" as this cycle's buzzword of choice. It sparks a wider conversation with Kyle about why staying visible in the market, through events, LinkedIn or simply contributing to the conversation, matters more than ever in a le...

In Episode 26 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is rejoined by Aimee Smith, Chief Data Officer at the UK Government, where they discuss her move from 25 years in policing and law enforcement into government's top data role, and why she believes culture, risk appetite and misaligned investment incentives, not legislation or technology, are what's really blocking data sharing across Whitehall.

They also touch on the UK's evolving position on data and AI sovereignty, the real purpose behind the National Data Library, and how Aimee is building a framework to track and prove the...

In this week's Data Debrief, Kyle Winterbottom and Catherine Dowden-King recap the Future of Data, AI & BI Summit with Starburst, share Catherine's top tips for networking at data events, and debrief this week's main episode with Simon Turner, Chief Technology Officer at Foil AI — including the Welsh Water case study that brought his "autonomic business" concept to life.

They also discuss:

In Episode 24 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Simon Turner, Chief Technology Officer at FOIL AI, where they discuss the "autonomic business" – organisations run by bounded, goal-driven digital entities that work alongside humans – and why, when every company has access to the same models and tools, competitive advantage has to come from somewhere else: your codified business knowledge, your data, and the creativity of your people.

The conversation covers why the most common mistake is automating processes that shouldn't exist in their current form, a real-world water utility case where an a...

In this week's Data Debrief, Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom are recording a day early ahead of a busy stretch in London – a custom client event, the Future of Data, AI & BI Summit and Big Data London, with Driven by Data Live on 8th October. The headlines this week belong to Donald Trump, who has dismissed AI safeguards and calls for a "kill switch" as a hoax, which sets up the episode's central question: what happens when the people with the power to sign off on AI – presidents or CEOs – sit well above the technical detail and the risk?

C...

In Episode 24 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is rejoined by David Castro-Gavino, Executive Director, Head of Data Deployment at AstraZeneca, and joined by his co-author Boyan Angelov, Principal Strategist at Exxeta, where they discuss their new book, Enabling Data, and why the data industry is still stuck in Groundhog Day. The same three arguments – who owns that number, is it right, and why does it take so long – have been repeating for thirty years, and rather than fixing them, the industry keeps renaming the problem.

The conversation covers why most complexity in data...

In Episode 23 of Season 7 of Data Debrief, Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's conversation with Greg Freeman, CEO and Founder of Data & AI Literacy Academy, and the gap between organisations that have given everyone a Copilot licence and those that are actually using AI to change how the business operates. As Catherine puts it, a Sunday league player and a Premier League player are both "playing football" – but nobody's confusing the two.

They also get into the week's headline that AI has a "greater than 10% chance" of wiping out humanity, why a growing anti-AI mood outside th...

In Episode 23 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is rejoined by Greg Freeman, CEO & Founder at Data & AI Literacy Academy, where they discuss why most organisations have mistaken tool training for AI literacy – and why a data-literate workforce, critical thinking and the willingness to rebuild processes from the ground up matter far more than knowing which buttons to press in Copilot.

They also explore why data quality and governance are finally having their day in the sun, how leaders must role-model the discipline to challenge AI-generated work, and why the businesses winning with AI...

In this week's Data Debrief, Kyle Winterbottom and Catherine Dowden-King unpack a ChatGPT-powered "smart learning" teddy bear aimed at three-year-olds, and use it as a way into a bigger question: when we let technology deliver the output, what happens to the learning journey that used to produce it? That thread runs from toddlers and university degrees all the way into the enterprise.

They also discuss Tuesday's main episode with Chris Pearce, Chief Data Officer at Ageas UK, why AI use cases are finally moving from the sandbox into production, and why the value of that work is...

In Episode 22 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Chris Pearce, Chief Data and AI Officer at Ageas, where they discuss why so few organisations manage to get AI out of proof-of-concept and into live production. Chris makes the case that this is a structural and operating model problem rather than a technical one, and that the businesses which crack it are the ones that understand their own commercial engine intimately enough to know exactly which decision they are trying to change.

Drawing on a 250-person function spanning data engineering, data...

In this week's Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom and Catherine Dowden-King unpack the week's main episode with Michael Ross and range far beyond it into the collapse in graduate hiring, the succession planning nobody is doing, and what's really happening at both ends of the data job market.

From a record 45% drop in advertised graduate roles, to the experienced leaders who've been out of work for two years, to Michael's case that every average hides an opportunity, Kyle and Catherine make the argument that AI is taking the blame...

In Episode 21 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Michael Ross, Data Agitator & Non-Executive Director at Domestic & General and Policy Expert. They discuss why so many consumer and retail businesses fail to turn data into commercial value, because they run on averages and siloed metrics that hide where money is actually being won and lost.

Drawing on a career spanning McKinsey, Figleaves, eCommera and DynamicAction, and years advising CEOs across the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority's portfolio, Michael makes the case for de-averaging: measuring distributions rather than averages, tracking failure modes rather...

In this week's Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast — Davin Crowley-Sweet OBE, CDO at National Highways, steps into Kyle Winterbottom's seat and is joined by Catherine Dowden-King to unpack the week's main episode with Nick Zervoudis and range far beyond it into the human side of data leadership.

From burnout and its lesser-known cousin "rustout," to the serendipity we've lost to working from home, to why psychological safety matters more than technical mastery, Davin and Catherine make the case that the job of a modern data leader is less about building things an...

In Episode 20 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Nick Zervoudis, Founder at Value from Data & AI, where they discuss why so many data and AI teams struggle to demonstrate measurable business value — and why the real failure almost always happens upstream, long before anyone tries to articulate it.

Nick makes the case that "we can't prove our value" is usually a symptom, not the disease: teams solve the wrong problem, skip the value case, or hand off value realisation to no one. Along the way they get into his five-point di...

Welcome to another episode of the Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine and Kyle reflect on the conversation with Marion Shaw, Senior Director of Data, Analytics and Data Management at Cencora, and her new book on data culture, before digging into why the "data culture" debate keeps circling the same questions, and why the answer almost always comes...

In Episode 19 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is rejoined by Marion Shaw, Senior Director, Data Analytics and Data Management at Cencora, where they discuss why building a genuine data culture is a people and process problem rather than a technology one, and what it actually takes to embed trust, curiosity and business value into how an organisation works with data.

The conversation centres on Marion's new book, Why Data Culture Matters, and digs into why trust is the single attribute with the biggest ripple effect on a data culture, plus the "AI...

Welcome to another episode of The Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine and Kyle reflect on Kyle's conversation with Laura Fiacco, Founder of Adaptive Assets, exploring why communication, influence and commerciality remain some of the most overlooked skills in data leadership. Alongside the episode discussion, they dive into LinkedIn's apparent AI U-turn, the growing challenge of AI-generated content...

In Episode 18 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Laura Fiacco, Founder of Adaptive Assets, where they discuss why communication, influence and commercial thinking have become the competitive advantage for modern data professionals, and how learning to communicate like an executive is now just as important as technical expertise.

They also discuss:

Welcome to another episode of The Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine returns from a two-week break to catch up with Kyle on the conversation with Joanne Riseborough, Group Data Management and Culture Director at Lloyd's Banking Group, alongside a wide-ranging catch-up covering AI ethics, the future of education, and why context is everything when it comes to...

In Episode 17 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Joanne Riseborough, Group Data Management and Culture Director at Lloyds Banking Group, where they discuss why the AI boom has quietly made data management one of the most strategically important disciplines in the boardroom.

They explore why AI is shining a spotlight on data quality, governance and culture, how large enterprises balance modernisation with legacy technology, and why organisations that invest in strong data foundations will be best positioned to realise meaningful value from AI.

They also discuss:

In Episode 16 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Priya Enefer, Chief Information Officer at Hakluyt & Company, where they discuss why the tension between CIOs and CDOs isn't a people problem, but an organisational design problem.

They explore how operating models, accountability, product thinking and executive alignment determine whether technology, data and AI become genuine competitive advantages or simply create duplication, politics and confusion.

They also discuss:

In Episode 15 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom was joined for the third time by Vin Vashishta, CEO and Founder of V-Squared, where they discuss why the organisations getting the most value from AI are focused less on models and use cases, and more on outcomes, information architecture and business transformation, which includes;

Welcome to another episode of The Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine and Kyle reflect on the conversation with Peter Crouch, Group Innovation Director at Lloyd's Banking Group, digging into what it really takes to build an innovation function that earns its keep, why "solving the right problem" beats "solving the problem right," and the discipline required to...

In Episode 14 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom was joined by Peter Crouch, Group Innovation Director at Lloyds Banking Group, where they discuss why the organisations that thrive in the AI era won't necessarily be those with the best ideas, but those that build the strongest innovation capability, and how large enterprises can adopt startup thinking without compromising governance, risk or customer trust, which includes:

• Why innovation capability matters more than individual ideas.

• How solving the right problem is more important than solving the problem right.

• Why large organisations should...

Welcome to another episode of the Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine and Kyle reflect on the conversation with Diana Comsa, Global Director of Customer Data Products at Condé Nast, diving deeper into what it takes to reframe customer data as a growth engine rather than a marketing function, the value of professional friction in shaping better thinking, a...

In Episode 13 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom was joined by Diana Comsa, Global Director of Customer Data Products at Conde Nast, where they discuss why customer data should be treated as a commercial growth engine rather than simply a marketing asset, and how solving the right customer problems unlocks long-term business value, which includes;

Welcome to another episode of the Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine and Kyle reflect on the conversation with Justin Borgman, co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Starburst, diving deeper into why AI adoption keeps stalling at scale, the real cost of pointing powerful tools at the wrong problems, and what it means to build differentiated business capability rather...

In Episode 12 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom was joined by Justin Borgman, Co-Founder and CEO of Starburst, where they discuss why the biggest barrier to AI success is no longer about models.

The conversation explores why traditional approaches to data architecture are struggling in the AI era, how enterprises can overcome fragmented data estates, the importance of context and semantics, why many organisations remain stuck in pilot mode, rising AI costs, build versus buy decisions, agentic AI, and what the next three to five years of enterprise AI adoption are likely to...

Welcome to another episode of the Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine and Kyle reflect on the conversation with David Krauza, VP of Enterprise Data Strategy, Products & Governance at Comcast, diving deeper into the "arts and crafts" trap that derails data programmes, the discipline of building stakeholder trust before you need it, and what it really takes to...

In Episode 11 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom was joined by David Krauza, VP of Enterprise Data Strategy, Products & Governance at Comcast, where they discuss why strategic clarity and proactive stakeholder engagement are the keys to unlocking genuine business value from data and AI, which includes;

Welcome to another episode of the Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine and Kyle reflect on the conversation with Sarah Emerson, Group Director of Insight & Business Partnering at Howden, diving deeper into the growing importance of commercial thinking, business partnering, and the role relationships play in driving value from data.

They cover: